The US–Iran truce collapses into the fiercest exchange yet and Hormuz shipping grinds to a halt; Ukraine’s strike campaign leaves six Russian regions without fuel; and OpenAI ships GPT-5.6.

US–Iran ceasefire collapses in the largest exchange of strikes yet — Hormuz shipping grinds to a halt

Vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, seen from Musandam, Oman, on 8 July 2026. Photo: Reuters

The three-week-old memorandum of understanding broke down spectacularly this week. Trump declared the truce “over” at the NATO summit in Ankara — calling Iranians “scum” and “very dishonourable people” — after Iran refused to stop attacking Gulf shipping. Iran struck three tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, fired ten ballistic missiles at Jordan’s Azraq air base, and hit US infrastructure in Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar; US CENTCOM answered with roughly 90 strikes on Iranian air defences, coastal surveillance and missile-storage sites, including the port of Bandar Abbas, where residents described two nights of explosions.

The exchange unfolded on the day Iran buried the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Mashhad (see World). Hormuz traffic has plunged sharply — data shows a steep fall in oil, gas and cargo ships using the corridor — though Brent has held near $78.80, markets reading the flare-up as tactical rather than terminal. The White House is reportedly bracing for a prolonged conflict even as a US official confirms technical diplomatic talks remain open. Trump’s exits are all bad: full escalation risks severe retaliation and huge cost; walking away leaves a contested strait and expensive energy; and re-negotiating with people he has just called “scum” is toxic at home. Retired Admiral Stavridis floated a Kharg Island blockade as the least-bad option — “We’re bringing a knife to a knife fight, but we’ve got a gun” — with heavy caveats.

Guardian · Al Jazeera: Hormuz · Al Jazeera: live · BBC: shipping data · Reuters: Jordan strike · Reuters: US strikes · NPR · ABC · War on the Rocks · CNN: Trump’s options · JPost

Ukraine’s strike campaign hits new scale: 35 Azov tankers in 96 hours, six Russian regions without fuel

A shuttered filling station in Russia; six regions now have no public fuel supply after strikes on oil infrastructure.

Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces struck 35 Russian vessels in the Sea of Azov in 96 hours — 14 in a single night on 8–9 July, including 12 gasoline tankers — alongside 45 military targets in occupied Crimea (the Saky thermal plant and three oil depots), depots in Stavropol, Tver and Rostov, and drones over Moscow that briefly suspended Domodedovo airport. The Ilsky refinery in Krasnodar Krai was hit again on 10 July. Up to 40% of Russia’s refining capacity is now disrupted, and six regions — Kabardino-Balkaria, Ingushetia, Chechnya, Dagestan, Magadan and Chukotka — have no functioning public filling stations.

Zelenskyy is pressing allies to say when promised Patriots arrive amid an air-defence shortage, and wants domestic Patriot production started after Trump’s blessing. But three sources close to the Kremlin told Reuters that Putin is more likely to escalate than negotiate — a direct rejection of the US peace push (more in Ukraine).

Militarnyi · Ukrainska Pravda: Moscow drones · Ukrainska Pravda: Rostov depots · NewsUkraine: six regions · NewsUkraine: 40% refining · United24: Crimea blackouts · AP: oil strikes · Reuters: Putin escalation

OpenAI releases the GPT-5.6 family — Sol leads on agents, Fable holds SWE-Bench

A grid of nine pelicans riding bicycles generated by GPT-5.6 across reasoning-effort levels. Image: Simon Willison

OpenAI shipped GPT-5.6 yesterday as a three-tier family — Luna, Terra, Sol — all live via API and Codex. Sol sets a new Terminal-Bench 2.1 SOTA (88.8%, 91.9% in ultra mode), leads DeepSWE v1.1 at 72.7%, and beats Claude Fable 5 on Agents’ Last Exam by 13.1 points. Fable 5 still leads SWE-Bench Pro (~80% vs Sol’s 64.6%), though OpenAI flagged methodology concerns with that benchmark. The headline new capability is programmatic tool calling — model-written JavaScript in an isolated, network-free V8 runtime — with an “ultra” mode coordinating four parallel agents. Cache writes now cost 1.25× the uncached rate, echoing Claude’s pattern. For agentic coding, Sol is competitive but doesn’t decisively surpass Fable on complex repository work (more in AI & Automation).

OpenAI · Simon Willison · MarkTechPost · r/ClaudeAI

Indicator	Value	Change
S&P 500 (f)	7,578	-0.14%
Dow 30 (f)	52,831	+0.13%
Nasdaq (f)	29,815	-0.41%
Russell 2000 (f)	3,005.4	-0.10%
VIX	16.05	+1.33%
Gold	4,122.8	-0.43%
BTC	$63,892	+1.50%
EUR/USD	1.1439	+0.05%
USD/NOK	9.75	+0.35%

VIX +1.33%, S&P and Nasdaq futures softer — the Iran ceasefire collapse and Hormuz shipping halt weigh on risk sentiment (see World).

World

Khamenei buried at Iran’s holiest shrine; his named successor never appeared

Mourners on a boulevard in Mashhad ahead of the burial of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 9 July 2026.

Ali Khamenei was interred at the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad after six days of mass mourning, formally closing the succession transition; two Basij paramilitaries were shot dead during the ceremony. His son Mojtaba — appointed Supreme Leader after Ali was killed in the 28 February US–Israeli strikes — never appeared at the public rites in Tehran or Mashhad, reportedly visible only in a grainy video watching from a distant balcony. His absence feeds opposition claims that he is either incapacitated or a deliberately unreachable figurehead; Israel’s foreign ministry mocked it. His most pressing task now is holding the Islamic Republic’s core operators together as the ceasefire that would have unlocked sanctions relief disintegrates.

BBC · CNN: successor absent · Iran International: burial · Iran International: shooting

Two disclosures shadow the US–Iran war: asylum-seeker data and an assassination plot

A lawsuit alleges the Trump administration secretly handed Iranian authorities confidential personal data on Iranian nationals who had sought US asylum — potentially exposing dissidents and their families to grave danger, an extraordinary breach of asylum confidentiality if confirmed. Separately, CNN reports that Israeli intelligence warned Washington that Iran had developed a plot to assassinate Trump. Together the two disclosures entangle Trump’s personal security with the wider confrontation and narrow any diplomatic off-ramp further.

SCMP: asylum data · CNN: assassination plot · Reddit: asylum · Reddit: plot

ICE agents kill wrong man in Houston; Mexico to file criminal complaints

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo — a Mexican national who had lived in the US for 35 years — was killed by federal immigration agents during a Houston traffic stop; the Department of Homeland Security confirmed he was not the operation’s intended target. Mexico announced it will file criminal complaints in the US over the deaths of Mexicans in immigration-enforcement custody, sharply escalating diplomatic tensions over ICE’s aggressive operations.

The Guardian · Reuters

IDF soldier accused of “field execution” of a Palestinian aid driver

Multiple eyewitnesses and a local truckers’ association accuse an Israeli soldier of killing Ahmad Esleem — a driver transporting World Central Kitchen food aid into Gaza — at point-blank range. The association said it may suspend operations in response. The killing adds to a pattern of aid-delivery incidents that have drawn international condemnation and threatened the fragile resumption of humanitarian supply lines.

The Guardian

Ebola is now the “fastest-growing outbreak ever,” Africa CDC warns

Africa CDC has described the outbreak in DRC’s Ituri province as the fastest-growing in history, with suspected cases now appearing in previously unaffected parts of Congo — a worrying sign of geographic spread. The death toll has passed 600 since the outbreak began in mid-May, and healthcare workers have threatened to strike over safety conditions.

ABC News · NPR · Reddit

Fire and heat: 12 dead in Spanish wildfires, 28 in a Chinese factory blaze

An emergency worker beside a road in Almería as a wildfire rages behind. Photo: BBC

A wildfire in the Los Gallardos area of Almería killed at least 12 people as southern Spain bakes under an acute heatwave, with some 150 firefighters battling the blaze under orange warnings — part of a broader Southern European heat pattern following June’s record temperatures. In China, at least 28 died in a major factory fire in Jinjiang, Fujian — the country’s “shoe capital” — the latest in a recurring pattern of industrial fires linked to inadequate exits and unsafe storage.

BBC: Spain · Guardian: Spain · BBC: Jinjiang

New Mexico accuses Trump’s DOJ of obstructing its Epstein investigation

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez accused the Trump administration of withholding records critical to his state’s ongoing Jeffrey Epstein investigation, alleging the DOJ is actively impeding his probe. Torrez has been among the most aggressive state prosecutors pursuing accountability in the Epstein network and its ties to powerful figures — and the accusation puts a state AG directly at odds with federal authorities over one of the most politically sensitive matters in the US.

Al Jazeera

Also today

Americas: Mexico has opened a formal probe into whether FBI agents operated on Mexican soil to seize Sinaloa boss Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada in 2024 — a potential sovereignty breach and major diplomatic crisis if confirmed — Guardian; Venezuela’s 24 June twin-earthquake death toll reached 3,889 as the UN launched a ~$300m appeal and warned of disease risk in overcrowded camps — Al Jazeera; Trump fired the remaining members of the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission weeks before the midterms, leaving a key oversight body leaderless — Guardian · NPR
Middle East: Syria says it arrested an ISIL-affiliated cell behind this week’s two Damascus explosions, which struck during Macron’s visit — Al Jazeera; Mahmoud Abbas announced Palestinian legislative elections for 28 November — the first since 2006 — with Gaza’s participation deeply uncertain — Le Monde; A Ukrainian military-intelligence officer testified to witnessing the killing of the Monaco bomb suspect, deepening a case that links Ukraine’s security services to an oligarch-politics killing — Guardian · BBC
Business: SK Hynix priced its Nasdaq debut at $26.5bn — the largest-ever US IPO by a foreign firm, surpassing Alibaba — riding the AI memory boom — BBC · Guardian; China is rolling out a broadened anti-sanctions toolkit, raising legal risks for foreign firms caught between conflicting Western and Chinese demands — Al Jazeera; NYT-led publishers asked a federal court to sanction OpenAI, alleging it concealed evidence central to their copyright case — Al Jazeera
Science: A common herpes vaccination may substantially cut dementia risk, The Economist reports — potentially one of the most cost-effective interventions available for ageing populations — The Economist

Ukraine

Advance pace more than halved — and an anonymous general says the Kremlin is deceiving Putin

General Oleksandr Syrskyi, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Commander-in-Chief Syrskyi reported Russia’s offensive pace fell by more than half in the first half of 2026, active fronts dropping from 13 to 6–7, with monthly Russian casualties around 32,000. Russian forces made only limited overnight gains near Kostiantynivka and Zatyshok; 283 combat clashes were logged in 24 hours, most on the Kostiantynivka and Sloviansk axes — no breakthrough anywhere. Meanwhile journalist Kolezev published an interview with an alleged serving Russian general who says the command is feeding Putin an unrealistic promise that Donbas will fall by end-2026 — a goal needing 55,000–60,000 recruits a month against falling enlistment. He reads Peskov’s recent “real war” framing as groundwork for an imminent, possibly covert mobilization; ISW judges Putin’s battlefield picture is divorced from reality.

Ukrainska Pravda: Syrskyi · Ukrainska Pravda: 283 clashes · Ukrainska Pravda: Kostiantynivka · Meduza: general interview · ISW

Diplomatic track: a Freya anti-ballistic coalition, a China role, and a UN ceasefire call

Zelensky announced the inaugural meeting of the Freya anti-ballistic missile coalition will be held in France in the coming days — the first structured multilateral effort around a Ukrainian-developed system to counter ballistic missiles, which the Defence Ministry calls the most lethal threat. He also disclosed talks with Trump at NATO about a potential Chinese mediation role, while Ukraine urged UN Security Council members to table an unconditional ceasefire resolution. The Kremlin, meanwhile, is struggling to craft a coherent counter-narrative after Rubio confirmed no written Alaska agreement and US officials publicly acknowledged Ukrainian tactical successes.

Ukrainska Pravda: Freya · UNN: coalition · Ukrainska Pravda: China · Ukrainska Pravda: UN call · Foreign Policy

A new Ukrainian munition dropped into gun barrels destroys 230 Russian artillery pieces in two days

A Ukrainian drone unit used a novel munition — reportedly dropped directly into Russian artillery gun barrels — to destroy 230 pieces in 48 hours. The weapon marks a qualitative step in counter-battery warfare, neutralising guns outright rather than merely suppressing their crews, though technical details remain limited.

Business Insider · r/UkrainianConflict · r/ukraine

Reading the war

Leaked documents reported by United24 allege Russia and China jointly planned to disable Starlink — unverified, but a notable escalation of Sino-Russian cooperation if genuine — United24
The Glass Backbone — a West Point argument that the US Army’s hub-and-spoke logistics, tuned for uncontested airspace, would break against a peer, using the stalled Russian convoy and HIMARS depot strikes as evidence — Modern War Institute · HN
Four years on: FPV drones have gone from hotwired DJI toys leaving “a light puff of smoke” to precision weapons that kill the moment a soldier leaves cover — reshaping ground combat globally — NPR
Foreign Affairs: Taiwan is buying drones but missing Ukraine’s real lesson — resilience came from the whole system (territorial defence, reserves, industrial depth), not the weapons — Foreign Affairs

Investigations

Macron’s French nuclear umbrella takes shape as European states seek cover

At the Ankara summit, Macron could point to tangible results from a near-decade push for European strategic autonomy: multiple countries are now actively seeking placement under the French nuclear umbrella, and French defence contracts are flowing. “A Europe that invests and defends its sovereignty and strategic autonomy within NATO: we’re there now,” he posted. France is the EU’s only nuclear power, making this one of the most consequential shifts in European security in decades — with one critical uncertainty: succession. A Eurocentrist successor continues the course; a Le Pen presidency could collapse the entire architecture.

Politico EU · r/geopolitics

Germany seals a Tomahawk missile deal at Ankara

Germany confirmed at the summit that it will buy US Tomahawk cruise missiles, closing a significant gap in European long-range precision strike as the US rebalances toward Asia and the Middle East. Delivery timelines are unclear. Coming alongside Berlin’s broader rearmament, the deal signals a meaningful move away from the post-Cold War restraint of the Merkel era.

DW · The Times · r/geopolitics

Report: 80% of UK’s post–Oct 7 anti-Israel protests run by an IRGC-linked NGO network

A 129-page NGO Monitor report, presented at the House of Lords, concludes that 80% of UK anti-Israel protests since October 7 were organised by a coordinated NGO network rather than grassroots activists — with at least 11 of 40 major campaigns linked to the IRGC, Hamas, Hezbollah, the PFLP or the Muslim Brotherhood. Many NGOs routed funding through US-based charitable vehicles to sidestep UK transparency rules. Named groups include the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Friends of Al Aqsa and the Muslim Association of Britain. The report frames the protests not as organic sentiment but as an influence operation engineered to manufacture the appearance of mass anti-Israel opinion and sway government policy — the hallmark structure of an IRGC-backed narrative-warfare campaign.

Jerusalem Post · r/geopolitics

Mali’s al-Qaeda affiliate launches a nationwide offensive — and may be winning

JNIM, al-Qaeda’s Sahel affiliate, has launched a massive offensive spanning some 478,000 square miles of northern, central and southern Mali. Mali’s defence minister was killed by a suicide truck bomb inside the Kati military base, 15km from Bamako; a separate attack on junta leader Goïta’s residence failed, and rebels also ambushed a convoy of Malian soldiers and Russian Wagner-linked mercenaries. A War on the Rocks analyst who has interviewed JNIM affiliates argues this is far more dangerous than Syria’s HTS transition: JNIM’s rank and file reject post-colonial borders entirely and aim for a supranational West African Islamic state — there is no moderate lane here.

War on the Rocks · DW: convoy attack · Reddit

Also today

Trump tied continued US troop presence in Europe to a Greenland deal and the Iran outcome — using allies’ security dependence as leverage in two unrelated negotiations at once — TVP World · CTV: Carney
Trump gave Zelenskyy a vague promise of a licence to manufacture Patriots — a commitment far ahead of the supply chains and industrial base Ukraine actually has — Guardian
Trump ordered a halt to all trade with Spain over its refusal on airspace and the 5% GDP target — legally fraught, since EU trade runs through the bloc; PM Sánchez played it down — Reuters
Italian authorities allege retired intelligence official Gavino Piras sold NATO secrets to Russia — and complained to his handlers about the paltry pay — The Times
A fictitious Nigerian federal agency was allocated ~£700k in the 2026 budget and ran from a government building; Tinubu ordered a probe as a corruption crisis widened — Guardian

Tech

pgrust: a full Postgres re-implementation in Rust now passes 46,000+ regression tests

pgrust is a ground-up Rust re-implementation of PostgreSQL 18.3 that claims disk-format compatibility with existing Postgres data directories and passage of the full regression suite. An upcoming rework introduces thread-per-connection (replacing Postgres’s process-per-connection model) and claims 50% faster OLTP and ~300× faster analytics. It’s not production-ready and performance hasn’t been the focus yet — but the test-coverage milestone is remarkable for a project of this ambition.

GitHub · HN

Cpp2Rust: a PLDI 2026 tool that translates C++ to fully safe Rust

A peer-reviewed tool from PLDI 2026 transpiles C++ to safe Rust via clang’s AST. Its key mechanism is Ptr<T> from the libcc2rs runtime, which models C pointer semantics with checked runtime operations while satisfying the borrow checker, in two modes: reference-counted (fully safe) or unsafe (for debugging). A published PLDI paper — with a formal correctness model — sets this apart from hobbyist transpilers.

GitHub · Lobsters

Two NaN edge cases: Python lists lie, Lua loops leak implementation details

A precise short piece on two NaN surprises. In Python, nan == nan is False but [nan] == [nan] is True — because list equality checks object identity first, letting the reflexive assumption bleed through in violation of IEEE-754. In Lua, NaN in a numeric for-loop behaves inconsistently depending on whether it’s the start, limit or step, because the loop uses different internal comparisons (< vs <=) — making the implementation detail observable. Both arise from NaN being an afterthought in language design.

sebsite.pw · Lobsters

Mitchell Hashimoto on Ghostty’s future — and why Zig breaking APIs is a feature

In a wide-ranging interview, Hashimoto describes Ghostty’s origins as a Zig and GPU-programming learning project that became a real product, and sketches a roadmap: an n-screen API for multiple background terminal screens, and a button protocol that persists clickable elements into scroll history. On Zig, he defends the breaking changes (0.15 rewrote the writer interface) as a sign of maturity, noting Andrew Kelley still optimises for millisecond compile times even though Ghostty’s lib already compiles “instantly.”

Alex Alejandre · HN

EU Parliament passes Chat Control 1.0 against the will of its own voting majority

The EU Parliament let suspicionless mass scanning of private messages proceed even though a majority of voting MEPs opposed it — 314 against, 276 for — because the rejection motion failed to reach the absolute majority of 361 votes required. The regulation lets US platforms (Instagram, Discord, Snapchat, Gmail) scan private communications without warrant or suspicion through 2028; a symbolic carve-out for end-to-end encrypted messages was added, but those weren’t being scanned anyway. MEP Patrick Breyer called it “a farce that damages democracy.”

Patrick Breyer · HN

Also today

Rust 1.97.0 makes symbol-mangling v0 the default (generic params preserved, not hashed), adds first-class Cargo warning control (CARGO_BUILD_WARNINGS=allow without cache invalidation), and stabilizes new bit-manipulation APIs — Rust Blog · Lobsters

AI & Automation

MCP attacks beat SOTA safety guardrails more than half the time — text classifiers can’t see tool abuse

A paper with released code and dataset demonstrates a structural gap in agentic safety: today’s guardrails are text classifiers trained to detect harmful language, but MCP-enabled attacks don’t need harmful language — only a benign-sounding tool call that triggers a malicious action. These “falsely benign attacks” bypass state-of-the-art guardrails more than half the time across five widely tested LLMs. The attack goal has shifted from “generate harmful text” to “execute harmful tools,” and the safety pipeline has no layer monitoring tool-call semantics. A concurrent SafeMCP paper proposes a defence: environment-grounded look-ahead reasoning that filters risky tools out of the action space before the model selects its next call, rather than post-hoc detection.

arXiv: FBA discussion · arXiv: SafeMCP · r/MachineLearning

Ask Claude what’s breaking your CLAUDE.md — over-documentation hurts agent reasoning

A developer who built a product almost entirely with agents over three weeks asked Claude directly what in their docs might be hurting its performance. The answer was counterintuitive: not missing information, but too much of it. Milestone logs with checked-off items, design decisions with their historical context, and accumulated gotchas all blur what’s currently true versus what was once true. The takeaway: sparse, present-tense structured context beats exhaustive documentation for agent reasoning — document the current state, not the journey to get there.

r/ClaudeAI

Velorn: an open-source video editor built to be operated by Claude via MCP

Velorn’s editor — multi-track timeline, AI-generated asset browser, and preview inspector.

A 25-year film/TV VFX professional spent most of this year building Velorn (formerly ComfyStudio) with Claude as co-developer, then added an MCP layer so Claude can also operate the editor. Connected agents can inspect project structure, preview timeline frames before committing, queue generation, add motion graphics, check media health and assist with export. The “preview-first” design means edits are visible and reviewable before anything destructive. Free, open-source, cross-platform, and already connecting to Codex and Claude Code — a purpose-built creative tool with agent operation as a first-class design goal, not a wrapper.

Velorn · r/ClaudeAI

Cloudflare’s two-stage AI vulnerability harness — the harness is what lasts

Cloudflare published a detailed architecture guide for AI-assisted vulnerability discovery at scale, built on the insight that the harness, not the model, is the durable artifact. Their system separates discovery from adversarial validation using different models for each, preventing correlated false positives. Core principles: a mandatory working proof-of-concept before any finding is treated as real, explicit threat models, and polyglot cross-repo dependency tracing that generic coding agents can’t handle. It reads as much as an architecture guide as a how-to.

Cloudflare Blog · HN

Also today

Models: Robbyant open-sourced LingBot-Video, a large MoE video world model for embodied AI (30B-A3B sparse + 1.3B dense) trained on 70K+ hours of robot demonstration data; tops RBench July for manipulation and spatial reasoning — GitHub · HuggingFace; Tencent open-sourced Hy3 (Apache 2.0), cutting hallucination (12.5%→5.4%) and commonsense errors (25.4%→12.7%) and positioned as flagship-competitive at 2–5× smaller — worth tracking for local/low-cost agentic use — Tencent · HN
Dev tools & experiments: A repo-local documentation system stored in docs/, with an AGENTS.md routing file, that treats humans and AI agents as co-readers so agents read intent rather than reconstruct it — Gist · Lobsters; llmpl, a Prolog library that calls LLMs inside queries, pairing symbolic backtracking and unification with fuzzy language understanding for logic-grounded reasoning — GitHub · Lobsters; A solo developer won VibeJam 2026’s full $25K prize with a browser capybara game built entirely with AI — Claude Code, ThreeJS, Suno, ElevenLabs, GPT Images-2, Tripo3d — no hand-written code, art or assets — playable · r/ClaudeAI

Long COVID & ME/CFS

ME/CFS patients carry higher β2 autoantibodies than post-COVID patients — with a distinct autonomic signature

Azcue et al. (2026, Scientific Reports) measured GPCR autoantibodies in 96 post-COVID condition (PCC) patients, 59 ME/CFS patients and 36 controls, finding meaningfully different profiles between the two diagnostic groups. ME/CFS patients had significantly higher β2-adrenergic AAb titers than both PCC patients and controls; PCC patients had more pathological M3 muscarinic AAb relative to controls. In ME/CFS specifically, β2 AAb levels correlated with sympathovagal imbalance on hemodynamic testing (tilt, Valsalva, deep breathing, HRV). The distinction matters: with maxed β2 AAb (>40 U/ml) and PEM as the primary symptom, this patient maps to the ME/CFS profile — the subgroup with the highest β2 burden and strongest autonomic correlation. Practically, the two failed immunoadsorption RCTs (IA-PACS-CFS, IAMPOCO), which enrolled broad PCC populations, may have been diluted by patients without high β2 AAb — and AAb-stratified trials (TURN-LC, EXTINCT) remain the most relevant tests.

Azcue et al., Scientific Reports 2026

STOP-PASC proteomics: a 60-protein Long COVID signature conserved across nine cohorts

The systems-immunology analysis of the 152-participant STOP-PASC Paxlovid trial (Maestri, Bonilla et al., medRxiv Dec 2025) adds two findings beyond the known negative clinical result. First, a meta-analysis of nine independent Long COVID Olink proteomics cohorts (n=590) identified a conserved 60-protein Long COVID Signature spanning monocyte, neutrophil and T/NK cell modules — the most robustly validated immune signature in LC to date, and a candidate primary endpoint for future trials. Second, Paxlovid did cause a measurable immune perturbation at day 15 (myeloid/complement/lysosome upregulation) that fully normalized by week 10 — explaining why short-course antivirals don’t yield sustained benefit: they transiently engage immune pathways without durably altering the chronic state. One caveat: using autoantigen arrays (not the GPCR functional bioassay), no widespread AAb differences were seen between patients and controls — a methodology-dependent result that does not contradict GPCR-specific ELISA findings.

Maestri, Bonilla et al., medRxiv 2025

Tracking

ADDRESS-LC (bezisterim, Ph2) — fully enrolled (n=200, May 2026); topline expected late Q3 2026
REVERSE-LC (baricitinib, Ph3) — recruiting at 17+ sites; neurocognition data expected Nov 2026
ANKTIVA COVID-4.019-Long — trial window closed July 2026; no results released
ANKTIVA INTERRUPT_LC (UCSF) — ongoing; primary completion Oct 2026
Sipavibart RCT (Klimas/NSU) — ongoing; primary completion Dec 2026
RESILIENCE (ensitrelvir, Japan, n=2000) — data collection complete June 2026; results expected Dec 2026
Daratumumab “ResetME” (Haukeland) — recruiting; 72-week follow-up; results ~2027; funding gap persists
RECOVER-AUTONOMIC IVIg (Gamunex-C) — trial complete; paper expected “coming months”
TURN-Long COVID (immunoadsorption, Amsterdam UMC) — recruiting; AAb-stratified; completion Dec 2027
EXTINCT post-COVID (immunoadsorption, Hannover) — enrollment complete (n=60); no results yet
Rapamycin LC/ME (Mount Sinai/Putrino + Simmaron) — both Ph2 ongoing; results expected Nov 2026
Sonlicromanol (Khondrion) — Ph2 active; PEM primary; no timeline update
SHIELD (valacyclovir+celecoxib+Paxlovid, Mount Sinai) — enrolling; results TBD
PolyBio GC B cell preprint (Locci/Penn) — still no preprint; May 2026 symposium data only
Brodin/Karolinska WGS in severe LC — still no preprint; May 2026 symposium data only
VIPER biomarker program (PolyBio/UCSF) — ongoing; no published outputs yet

cd ~/repos/josse-posten && claude --resume 2980c0e2-b0fb-46f4-beb0-d4c6dd8c4e6b