Evening Brief, Sunday 28 June

The Strait of Hormuz again became the world’s most expensive narrow passage. A Panama-flagged tanker, M/T Kiku, was hit by what American officials described as an Iranian one-way attack drone while carrying more than 2m barrels of crude. The strike followed another reported hit on a merchant vessel off Oman, and the United States answered with attacks on Iranian missile, drone, radar, air-defence and mine-laying sites. Iran then said it struck American interests, while Kuwait and Bahrain reported hostile drones or missiles in their airspace.

Abbas Araghtschi, Iran’s foreign minister, used a visit to Baghdad to insist that Tehran alone should administer the waterway. That position clashes with the American view that Iran has broken the interim ceasefire meant to restore safe passage after months of attacks and blockade. Donald Trump sharpened the threat in public, warning that Washington might "complete the job" militarily if Tehran did not stop. The language matters because markets and navies read it as policy risk, not mere bluster.

Congress has already tried to pull the leash tighter. A war-powers resolution passed the Senate 50-48 and the House 215-208, demanding that Donald Trump seek approval or halt the campaign. Ro Khanna threatened court action, while Chuck Schumer accused the president of creating chaos. The ceasefire now has two clocks ticking: one in the Gulf, where ships still sail through danger, and one in Washington, where presidential force meets congressional patience.

Venezuela’s coastal disaster entered its grimmest phase, but rescuers still found life in the ruins. Two earthquakes of magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 struck on June 24, only 39 seconds apart, devastating La Guaira and nearby coastal districts. Officials put the death toll at 1,430, with more than 3,200 injured and thousands of families left homeless. Rescue teams have pulled out an 11-year-old boy, a baby, a family trapped with a small child and several adults after about three days under collapsed buildings.

The international response has grown, though not fast enough for many neighbourhoods. Delcy Rodríguez said 24 countries had sent 521 tonnes of supplies, 86 dog teams and more than 2,700 search-and-rescue or support personnel. Spain’s military emergency unit pulled one survivor from the Vistamar residence, while a Spanish Air Force A330 returned to Madrid with 96 evacuees from eight countries. Portugal’s community in Aveiro began collecting goods after Portuguese nationals were confirmed among the dead.

Residents also accused the state of arriving late or not at all. In parts of Caracas, volunteers used social media to find torches, picks, shovels, medicine and food, then dug by hand where heavy machinery could not go. The collapse of the road between Caracas and La Guaira has made the logistics worse, and aftershocks have kept buildings unstable. Venezuela’s catastrophe is now testing more than rescue skill; it is exposing how much capacity a battered state can still summon when concrete falls and citizens stop waiting.

Europe’s heatwave eased in some places, but its bill kept rising. France’s public-health agency recorded about 1,000 excess deaths since June 24, a provisional figure that officials warned would probably climb. People over 65 accounted for 85% of those deaths, and deaths at home surged, especially around Paris. On one Friday alone, 109 people died in public places or at home in Paris, compared with a usual daily average of 14. Funeral homes in the capital filled, hospitals reported pressure and farms counted heavy damage from temperatures above 40°C.

Records fell across the continent. Germany reached 41.5°C in Möckern-Drewitz, Poland provisionally hit 40.5°C in Słubice, the Czech Republic reported 41.1°C, Denmark logged 37°C and Sardinia reached 41°C. Germany also recorded its warmest night, with Kubschütz staying at 29.4°C. At least ten people drowned in German lakes and rivers as people searched for relief, and storms that followed the heat trapped hundreds of passengers on a train without power or air conditioning.

Politics has moved quickly to the awkward part. France is debating air conditioning, emergency farming measures and whether official warnings reached the vulnerable. Italy placed 18 cities under red alert, while consumer groups warned that cooling, water and food costs were hitting households. Heat has stopped looking like weather and started behaving like public infrastructure’s harshest annual audit.

Two air crashes turned routine flights into national tragedies. Near Nancy in eastern France, a German-registered Pilatus PC-6 carrying skydivers crashed shortly after takeoff from Nancy-Essey aerodrome. All 11 people on board died: the pilot, five instructors and five students. Witnesses reported that the engine cut out during the climb, then the aircraft fell almost vertically and exploded near homes and a commercial area. Relatives had gathered to film the tandem jumps and instead watched the crash unfold.

French investigators opened a technical inquiry. Prefect Yves Séguy said a malfunction caused the crash, but officials have not yet identified the failure, and the pilot made no emergency call before impact. The victims included freelance nurses who had booked a first skydive, in part to decompress after difficult work during the heatwave. Emergency teams treated traumatised relatives at the airfield.

Saudi Arabia then confirmed another deadly aviation accident. An Aramco helicopter crashed around 6am in Ras Tanura, killing all 14 Saudi citizens on board. Authorities said they had found no immediate sign of foul play and opened an investigation. The crash came two days after Aramco resumed crude loadings at Ras Tanura, one of the region’s largest oil facilities, after months of disruption linked to the wider Gulf conflict.

The two accidents have different causes, settings and strategic meanings, but they share one lesson: aviation safety is judged not by normal days, but by the few seconds when machinery, training and luck all meet.

Aleksandar Vučić told supporters in Belgrade that he would resign within weeks, then quickly clarified that he had not yet formally done so. Serbia’s president promised to help the Serbian Progressive Party win snap elections, but he gave no date for a resignation, no election timetable and no clear plan for who would take the presidency. Under the constitution, an election must follow within 90 days once a resignation lands. That gap gives Aleksandar Vučić room to choreograph the next act.

The announcement follows 18 months of protest that began after a railway station awning collapsed in Novi Sad in November 2024, killing 16 people. The movement widened from demands for accountability into a student-led challenge over corruption, media pressure, construction deals and state intimidation. A pro-government poll puts the Serbian Progressive Party near 47% and the student movement around 31%, strong enough to explain why the president might prefer early elections before the opposition grows more organised.

Opposition figures read the move as pre-emption, not surrender. Analysts suspect Aleksandar Vučić may try to return as prime minister, a job he held from 2014 to 2017, while backing a party list branded "United Serbia". The European Union will watch closely, because Serbia’s accession talks are already stalled over rule of law, elections, corruption and alignment with sanctions on Russia. His third act may begin not with a farewell, but with a carefully folded resignation letter kept in his own pocket.