Evening Brief, Tuesday 30 June

Donald Trump said Iran had requested a meeting in Doha, while Iran’s foreign ministry denied any direct contact with the United States and said only a technical delegation would travel to Qatar. The White House sent Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, and Reuters reported that technical teams may discuss the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway that usually carries about a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas trade.

The dispute over process follows a weekend in which Iran said it attacked vessels using a US-backed evacuation route, the United States said it struck 10 Iranian military targets, and Iran then said it fired missiles and drones at US bases in Kuwait and Bahrain. By Monday both sides had paused, but oil stayed above $100 a barrel and Brent rose again as traders priced the truce as fragile rather than finished.

Iraq added another complication by pressing OPEC for a bigger production quota after war losses and export disruption squeezed a budget that relies on oil for 88 percent of government revenue. The strait is not a bargaining chip on a map; it is the narrow pipe through which inflation can return to every cabinet table.

Venezuela’s government put the toll from the twin earthquakes at 1,719 dead, 5,034 injured and 15,866 displaced after magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 shocks hit on June 24. La Guaira suffered the worst damage, doctors processed hundreds of bodies each day, and the United Nations procured 10,000 body bags in expectation of a higher final count.

Rescuers still pulled people from the rubble after the usual 72-hour window closed. Crews freed 21-year-old Aaron Levi Cantillo after 106 hours, and a child survived more than 120 hours before teams reached the Caribe sector. More than 2,000 rescuers from 27 countries and 160 search dogs searched unstable buildings as aftershocks kept moving the ground beneath them.

The disaster acquired a sharper political edge after a chartered flight carrying more than 140 Venezuelan deportees from US immigration detention landed at Maiquetía airport hours before the quakes. Officials took the group to the government-run Hotel Santuario La Llanada, which collapsed, and relatives said withheld phones and documents slowed identification. Earthquakes punish weak concrete first; this one also exposed the brittle machinery around migration, custody and state care.

The US Supreme Court struck down Donald Trump’s order limiting birthright citizenship, ruling 6-3 that the 14th Amendment extends citizenship to virtually everyone born on American soil. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the amendment’s post-Civil War promise still binds the government, halting a flagship immigration order before agencies could implement it.

The same court moved rightward elsewhere. It upheld Idaho and West Virginia bans on transgender girls and women competing in female sports teams, also by 6-3, and said those laws did not violate equal protection or Title IX. That decision affects more than two dozen Republican-led states with similar rules, while leaving fights in inclusion states such as California and Connecticut alive in lower courts.

The justices also expanded presidential removal power by allowing Trump to fire Federal Trade Commission members without cause, weakening a 1935 precedent that protected several independent agencies. In a narrower ruling, they blocked him from removing Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, treating the central bank as a special case because of monetary policy.

The term leaves Trump with a Constitution that blocks one grand immigration claim but hands him a longer lever over the administrative state. The court did not simply choose restraint or power; it chose which institutions must absorb each.

Peru’s electoral authority declared Keiko Fujimori president-elect after a 22-day count, giving her 50.135 percent of valid votes against Roberto Sánchez’s 49.865 percent. She won by about 49,600 ballots out of more than 18 million cast, helped by overseas Peruvians after Sánchez had led parts of the domestic count.

Fujimori’s victory returns a famous and toxic name to power. Her father Alberto Fujimori ruled from 1990 to 2000, then was convicted of corruption and crimes against humanity; she built Fuerza Popular into a durable machine and lost three previous runoffs before finally winning on a promise of order.

Sánchez rejected the result, alleged fraud in the overseas vote and called for demonstrations, while the electoral authority said the count was final. The incoming bicameral congress gives no single force a majority, so Fujimori will take office on July 28 with a narrow legal win and a wide social argument still unresolved.

Her first agenda pairs crime control with preparations for El Niño, a neat illustration of Peru’s bind: citizens want a state that can patrol streets, manage weather shocks and stop changing presidents every few months. Her mandate is not a blank cheque, but a receipt printed in very small type.

Germany broke its all-time heat record twice in one weekend, first at 41.3°C on Friday and then at 41.5°C on Saturday, while June ranked provisionally as the country’s second-warmest since measurements began. As the heat broke, the German Weather Service warned of storms that could dump 30 to 50 litres of rain per square metre, with local extremes up to 80 litres within a few hours.

Romania faced a red heat alert across nearly the whole country, with maximum temperatures of 35°C to 41°C and tropical nights that denied people a proper reset. Storm warnings followed the heat, with gusts forecast at 70 to 90 km/h in some counties and hail up to an inch across parts of Transylvania.

France offered the most sobering ledger. A 10-day heatwave killed more than 1,000 people, pushed Paris to 42°C, and forced the government to order 30,000 air conditioners for hospitals before another hot spell expected this weekend. Schools will also stop holding afternoon baccalauréat and brevet exams from 2027.

Europe is learning that adaptation does not mean buying a few fans after the thermometer peaks. The weather is now testing power grids, hospitals, exams and emergency services in the same week, which is a climate policy by other means.