Evening Brief, Monday 6 July

Iran turned Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's funeral into a show of numbers and fury. Millions filled Tehran's streets for a procession stretching more than 10 km, after US-Israeli airstrikes killed the supreme leader and four family members on 28 February. Mourners chanted against America and Israel, while the absence of his wounded successor, Mojtaba Khamenei, left the choreography of continuity looking less tidy than the crowds suggested.

Russia also raised the pressure before the NATO summit, launching what Ukrainian officials described as 68 missiles and 351 drones at Kyiv. City authorities said at least nine people were killed and 46 wounded, with residential districts hit and rescuers working on damaged high-rises. Ukraine's air force said it intercepted 37 missiles and 326 drones, figures that show both the strength of Kyiv's shield and the sheer volume Moscow now fires to get through it.

China then test-fired a long-range ballistic missile from a nuclear submarine into the Pacific, calling it routine training with a dummy warhead. Australia, Japan and New Zealand condemned the launch, while Russia defended Beijing's right to test. Penny Wong, Australia's foreign minister, linked the episode to China's broader military build-up and criticised the warning time given to neighbours.

Three theatres moved at once: Tehran signalled defiance, Moscow tested air defences and Beijing advertised reach. That is the hard-security weather forecast before Ankara, and it is getting colder.

NATO's 32 leaders arrive in Ankara with a short formal session and a long list of awkward conversations. The summit will showcase Turkish defence industry, host Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Asian partners, and try to present unity around a 5% of GDP defence-spending goal by 2035. A draft declaration says European allies and Canada raised core defence investment by more than $139 billion in 2025, while members are expected to pledge €70 billion in support for Ukraine in 2026. The United States is not expected to fund that package, which gives the unity language a hollow ring.

Donald Trump's mood complicates the meeting. He has pressed allies for more spending, complained that the relationship is not reciprocal and, just before the summit, posted a personal meme targeting Giorgia Meloni. Italian ministers chose studied calm rather than escalation, with Antonio Tajani arguing that the relationship mattered more than one leader's insults.

Turkey has prepared for the gathering by locking down dissent. Authorities banned demonstrations in Ankara, deployed roughly 40,000 security personnel and detained more than 100 people at an anti-NATO protest, after earlier raids swept up journalists, lawyers and activists. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will host allies who need Turkey's army, drones and geography, which means few will want to spoil dinner with democracy talk.

Ankara will not decide whether NATO survives. It will show how much grumbling the alliance can swallow while still calling itself united.

Southern France fought the most dangerous fire of the day near Perpignan, where flames in the Trévillach massif burned 4,600 hectares and forced more than 10,000 people from two dozen towns and villages. About 700 firefighters battled strong winds, heat and dry air, while five people were injured, including two firefighters. Laurent Nunez, the French interior minister, warned that the weather had turned against crews again.

The Tour de France kept racing but lost part of its carnival. Organisers closed the French side of stage three to spectators, urging fans to stay away from the final 40 km to 44 km so police and emergency workers could focus on the fire. Nearby blazes added to the strain: Girona had 2,200 hectares burned, Castellón's Soneja fire reached about 181 hectares, and Portugal had just brought a 13,000-hectare blaze under control.

Spain's heatwave sharpened the risk. Aemet placed most regions under orange warnings and prepared red alerts for parts of Lleida, the Ebro valley and southern Valencia, with forecasts as high as 44°C near Carcaixent. In Soneja, around 300 personnel and 16 aerial resources fought an uncontained fire as 500 people from Azuébar remained evacuated and investigators examined signs that the cause was not natural.

The old summer bargain, heat for holidays, now comes with roadblocks, evacuation halls and empty mountain roads where crowds should be cheering.

Castlelake finally persuaded easyJet's board after four rejected approaches. The US investor offered £6.90 a share, valuing the Luton-based airline at up to £5.5 billion on a fully diluted basis, after earlier bids climbed from £5.60 to £6.50. EasyJet shares jumped more than 10% in early London trading, but the deal still needs a firm offer by 3 August and must navigate EU ownership rules that require 51% of a European airline's capital to be held by European entities.

ITV moved in the opposite direction, agreeing to sell its media and entertainment arm to Sky for up to £1.6 billion while keeping ITV Studios as a standalone listed producer. The combined Sky-ITV broadcaster would control about 20% of in-home television viewing in Britain, sit behind the BBC and ahead of YouTube, and aim for about £200 million in annual cost savings within three years. Sky chief executive Dana Strong pitched scale as protection, not empire-building.

Novartis added a different kind of British asset, agreeing to buy London cancer biotech Myricx Bio for $1.1 billion upfront and up to $400 million in milestones. Myricx develops antibody-drug conjugates with N-myristoyltransferase inhibitor payloads, a preclinical bet on overcoming resistance in solid tumours. Fiona Marshall, Novartis's biomedical research president, tied the purchase to a broader push into platform therapies.

The common thread is not British weakness alone. It is that global buyers still like British assets, especially when public markets price them more cheaply than private ambition does.

António Guterres opened a two-day UN dialogue in Geneva with a warning that artificial intelligence is moving faster than the institutions meant to control it. He said systems that can reshape economies, work, elections and security are being deployed before even builders can fully keep up. The meeting is not a treaty negotiation, but it aims to align governments around risk evaluation, common standards, transparency, human rights and support for poorer countries.

The sharpest warning concerned children. António Guterres called for mandatory safety testing before AI reaches minors, a ban on AI-generated sexual images of children and a guarantee that distressed children are directed to human help. He used vibe-coding, the use of plain-language prompts to make AI write code, as a neat symbol of lost human oversight.

Delegates are studying a preliminary report from the UN's 40-expert Independent International Scientific Panel on AI, released on 1 July. The panel found that AI capabilities are accelerating faster than governments can understand, test or regulate them, while rules remain fragmented between the EU, China, the United States and many countries with little say at all. A fuller report and another global meeting are due next year.

A chatbot that once spread by invitation and wonder now faces the oldest safety test: prove the thing before handing it to a child.

Norway produced the sporting shock, beating Brazil 2-1 in the World Cup last 16 at MetLife Stadium. Erling Haaland scored twice after Orjan Nyland saved a Bruno Guimaraes penalty, and Neymar's stoppage-time penalty merely softened Brazil's exit. Neymar then announced the end of his international career, closing with 80 goals and 58 assists in 130 appearances and no World Cup.

England survived a different kind of ordeal at the Azteca. Jude Bellingham scored twice in 98 seconds, Jarell Quansah was sent off early in the second half, and Harry Kane's penalty made the cushion just large enough. Raul Jimenez pulled Mexico back to 3-2, but Jordan Pickford's saves and 12 minutes of stoppage-time defending sent England into a Miami quarter-final against Norway. The win also gave Mexico its first World Cup defeat at the Azteca.

FIFA, meanwhile, turned a disciplinary decision into a constitutional argument about football power. It suspended Folarin Balogun's one-match ban after Donald Trump called Gianni Infantino, letting the US forward face Belgium despite a red card against Bosnia and Herzegovina. Trump thanked FIFA for reversing what he called an injustice, while UEFA called the move unprecedented and warned that credibility was at stake.

The football has been wild enough on its own. FIFA's problem is that the refereeing room now looks uncomfortably close to the Oval Office.