Evening Brief, Tuesday 9 June

Donald Trump said American diplomacy had entered its final stretch and predicted a deal with Iran within two to three days, after Iran and Israel halted their latest direct exchange of fire. Iran fired around 30 missiles at Israel, according to an Israeli military official, after Israel struck Beirut’s southern suburbs; Israel then hit what it called military targets in western and central Iran. Lebanon stayed exposed, with Israeli strikes hitting around 15 localities in the south and killing 14 people, according to Lebanese authorities and the Red Cross.

The Strait of Hormuz supplied the reminder that diplomacy does not stop accidents, miscalculation or hostile fire. A U.S. Army AH-64 Apache crashed near the waterway on Monday, and both crew members were rescued. Officials had not said whether Iranian fire, mechanical failure or another cause brought it down; the Trump administration and U.S. Central Command had issued no statement by Monday night.

The military backdrop remains dense. Since late February, the United States has used Apaches, Reaper drones and fighter jets around the strait, while Iran has kept commercial traffic under pressure and the United States has imposed its own blockade on Iranian ports. Trump wants a diplomatic exit, Tehran wants Lebanon handled at the same time, and Benjamin Netanyahu warned Israel would answer any renewed Iranian attack with force. Castles rarely decide modern wars; this narrow sea lane may still decide how much trust is left in a truce that had little to spare.

Rescue teams in the southern Philippines kept searching through damaged towns after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck near Mindanao on June 8. The disaster agency confirmed 37 deaths, more than 470 injuries and four people still missing, while nearly 41,000 residents fled their homes. The quake triggered tsunami warnings across the Pacific, but the worst damage came from falling debris, landslides and collapsed infrastructure rather than from waves.

Aftershocks made every building inspection slower. Phivolcs recorded more than 1,050 aftershocks within the first day, including tremors up to magnitude 6.7. Officials counted at least nine collapsed bridges, 20 damaged roads and more than 2,500 affected houses, while General Santos airport closed to all but humanitarian flights and cancelled 63 domestic services.

Schools turned into another worry. Around 6,000 public school buildings awaited safety checks before classes could resume, and many of the injured were students returning for the first day of the academic year. The government said emergency funds were sufficient, but money will not quickly replace bridges, homes or confidence in concrete. The earthquake has become a test of whether a disaster-prone state can move from rescue to rebuilding before the next aftershock writes the schedule.

Roberto Sánchez of Juntos por el Perú held the narrowest of leads over Keiko Fujimori as Peru counted runoff ballots. With 95.6% of polling stations processed, Sánchez had 8,899,257 votes, or 50.084%, against Fujimori’s 8,869,481 votes, or 49.916%. The margin stood below 30,000 votes, small enough to vanish as overseas ballots arrive and contested polling-station logs move through electoral juries.

The remaining votes carry real weight. More than one million Peruvians are registered abroad, and roughly 400,000 voted in the first round; those ballots are due in Lima by Wednesday. At home, 1,513 vote-count sheets have been challenged or flagged, covering about 450,000 votes. That is not a rounding error; it is the election’s hinge.

The map split along familiar lines. Fujimori led in Lima and the coast, while Sánchez gained as ballots from the Andes and Amazon arrived. Peru has cycled through eight presidents since 2016, and neither candidate commands a congressional majority. Her fourth national reckoning and his sudden opening both point to the same hard fact: whoever wins will inherit not a mandate, but a country asking the ballot box to do too much repair work.

The AI boom moved toward Wall Street and Cupertino at the same time. Anthropic filed confidential IPO paperwork on June 1, OpenAI followed on June 9, and SpaceX prepared a Friday listing that reportedly seeks a valuation near $1.8 trillion. OpenAI may target up to $1 trillion, while Anthropic’s latest funding round valued it at $900 billion, figures that ask investors to price promise, infrastructure and market power long before profits settle the argument.

The cash need is not mysterious. OpenAI has raised $185.9 billion since its founding, Anthropic has raised $126.8 billion, and both companies need far more for data centres. SpaceX adds a different kind of growth story: enormous future demand, modest current revenue by comparison, and a valuation that would make it the largest IPO ever if it lands as planned.

Apple supplied the user-facing version of the same race. At what several outlets described as Tim Cook’s final major launch as chief executive, the company unveiled Siri AI, a rebuilt assistant that uses Google’s Gemini model for complex queries. The product can inspect on-screen content, draw on Mail, Calendar, Notes and Contacts, and execute multi-step tasks across apps, but it will not launch on iPhones and iPads in the European Union.

The irony is tidy. Apple, long the champion of tight integration and privacy, turned to Google to make Siri competitive; OpenAI and Anthropic, born as research labs with cautionary language, now need public-market capital to keep building. The AI race has entered its most adult phase: fewer demos, bigger bills and much less room for magic dust.