Jordan's air defenses shot down five Iranian missiles Thursday morning aimed at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, a key U.S. hub — the second such barrage in two days and a notable shift, since Iran had mostly been retaliating for direct U.S. strikes on its own soil rather than initiating attacks. The U.S. answered by completing what it called "a heavy wave of strikes against Iran," and separately partnered with Saudi Arabia to hit Iran-backed militias in Iraq, killing at least 20 fighters and six Iranian advisers. No U.S. or Jordanian casualties reported from either missile wave.
Per AP/wire (ClickOrlando) and ABC7/wire
The death toll from Tuesday's magnitude-7.1 earthquake on Japan's Kyushu island has risen to 34, with 89 injured; seven died in a blast and partial collapse at an Aeon Mall in Kashima, eleven in Yatsushiro City. More than 267,000 people remain evacuated, and extreme summer heat combined with broken water lines and no power for air conditioning is raising fears of heatstroke deaths on top of the structural toll as 1,400-plus rescue personnel keep working.
Per UPI and Japan Times
Spain's largest recorded wildfire of the season was declared contained Wednesday, and France's main fire line has stabilized about nine miles west of Bordeaux after burning over 100,000 acres in the Gironde region — the country's worst wildfire crisis since WWII. More than 300,000 people were displaced at the outbreak's peak. The Castellón region in Spain is still out of control (nearly 25,000 acres burned, 10,000+ evacuated), and a fresh 40°C heatwave forecast for later this week is raising fears of flare-ups just as containment lines were holding.
Per NPR and Al Jazeera
President Trump is set to hold separate meetings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy today; agenda and expected outcomes were thin in overnight coverage — watch for a readout later today.
Both reported after Wednesday's close and got opposite verdicts. Microsoft beat on earnings and revenue on the back of a 27% jump in cloud revenue plus a strong commercial backlog, and popped about 2%. Meta's revenue actually beat ($60.8B vs. $60.17B expected) but EPS badly missed ($6.18 vs. $7.22 expected) alongside a fresh increase to its spending forecast, and the stock fell roughly 10%. Same week, same AI-capex question, opposite investor answer — Apple and Amazon report tonight and will complete the verdict on whether Big Tech's spending story still holds up.
xAI released Grok 4.5 — billed as its most intelligent model yet — across grok.com, X, iOS and Android, alongside a separate, more capable speech-to-speech voice model, both landing July 29.
Per xAI newsroom
OpenAI launched "ChatGPT for Academic Researchers," giving free frontier-model access to an initial 10,000 selected academics, with a stated goal of expanding to 100,000 researchers by 2027.
Apple's Q3 consensus EPS is $1.89 — watch iPhone demand, services growth, China performance, and Apple Intelligence commercialization progress. Amazon's Q2 consensus EPS is $1.82 — the swing factor is AWS growth, plus retail margins, ad revenue, and full-year capex guidance. Both land after the bell; expect late-session volatility either way.
Per Investing.com
No new development overnight. The $110B, $31.00/share cash deal remains paused pending resolution of the 12-state attorneys-general antitrust challenge; a Paramount shareholder suit alleging an improper arrangement with the Ellisons and the White House to secure approval is also still pending. Carrying forward — nothing moved this news cycle.
Per Variety
Kospi's continued underperformance (down another 1.2% after Wednesday's brutal 6%+ drop) says the Asia chip-equipment unwind isn't finished, even as Nikkei manages a small bounce. In the U.S., last night's Microsoft-versus-Meta split is doing more to set the tape than the Fed hold itself — QQQ's 1.4% pre-market gain reads as relief that at least one hyperscaler validated the AI-capex bet. Oil is giving back a chunk of Wednesday's Iran-driven spike now that the overnight missile intercepts held with no reported damage, and gold's modest bid alongside a softer dollar looks like leftover geopolitical hedging rather than a fresh risk-off move.
New overnight: a second Iranian missile wave hit Jordan Thursday morning (five missiles, all intercepted), following Wednesday's first attack. The U.S. has now struck back twice — first against Iranian targets directly, then jointly with Saudi Arabia against Iran-backed militias in Iraq (20+ fighters and six Iranian advisers killed). The Hormuz mediation track (Saudi/Oman/Pakistan/Egypt/Qatar) that looked promising after Monday's Trump-Netanyahu meeting is now competing with an active, widening exchange of fire. Our tape trades on this via oil.
Resolved (for now): the FOMC held at 3.50–3.75% Wednesday, 9–3, with Hammack, Kashkari and Logan all dissenting in favor of a hike. Warsh's presser was notably short — "I asked for a good family fight and I got one" — and he stressed reading the trend in the data rather than any single print, a pointed line given oil's spike into the decision. 2Y/10Y have eased slightly since (4.26%/4.61% vs. 4.31%/4.65% Monday). September is still framed as live hike risk.
The verdict started arriving last night: Microsoft's cloud beat (+27% Azure growth) sent it up 2%, while Meta's EPS miss and higher spending forecast sent it down 10% — the market is now pricing AI capex conviction per-company rather than as a single narrative. Apple and Amazon report tonight and will round out the picture. Asia's chip-equipment names are still absorbing the DUV-restriction shock from earlier in the week (Kospi -1.2% again after -6%+ Wednesday).
Genuine progress overnight — Spain's largest fire contained, France's Gironde line stabilized near Bordeaux — but a new 40°C heatwave forecast for later this week keeps the flare-up risk live, particularly around Castellón, which is still burning out of control.
SpaceX launched the NROL-95 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office at 3:10am ET from Space Launch Complex 40, on a Falcon 9 that stuck its booster landing per usual. Whatever's tucked inside NROL-95 is, by design, the one payload description you'll never actually get — the fun part is that the rocket science gets to be public even when the cargo manifest doesn't.
Per Space.com
He fell in, the lid closed, and nobody found him for eight hours — until rescuers opened the door to what they assumed was an empty unit and his head popped up "like a game of whack-a-mole, or Oscar the Grouch coming out of his can," per the company that owns the toilet. He's fine. The bar for worst Tuesday in Missouri has been set for a while.