Evening Brief, Monday 13 July

US aircraft, naval vessels and drones struck Iranian air-defence systems, coastal radar sites, missile and drone assets and small boats overnight, while Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they targeted US facilities in Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman. Jordan said it intercepted four Iranian missiles, and Kuwait said it engaged hostile aerial targets, which pulled several Gulf hosts of American forces deeper into the crisis.

The Strait of Hormuz then went quiet in the most literal way markets understand. Kpler reported that no commercial vessels crossed the waterway while broadcasting their location after Sunday evening; eight vessels transited on Sunday, compared with a pre-conflict daily average of 138 ships.

Iran’s foreign ministry said the June memorandum meant to reopen the strait and allow 60 days of talks was now in trouble.

Oil reacted as expected: Brent rose 4.3% to $79.31 a barrel, while WTI climbed by as much as 4.5% toward $74. That is not yet a wartime price shock, but it is enough to bother central bankers and any politician who has to explain petrol prices before an election. The waterway has become both battlefield and barometer, which means every fresh radar strike now carries a shipping invoice.

Fire tore through 800 hectares of the protected Fontainebleau forest south-east of Paris after starting near the A6 motorway on Sunday, pushed by dry weather and high winds. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said investigators found around ten ignition points within 1,000 metres, a pattern that prompted an arson inquiry, while 500 firefighters and aircraft worked to protect villages and infrastructure.

The human cost spread beyond the burn line. Roughly 900 people left homes in villages including Le Vaudoué and Noisy-sur-École, and the fire temporarily disrupted motorways and train lines into the capital. Fontainebleau is not just woodland; it has been an artistic reserve since 1861 and appears in the work and memory of the Barbizon painters, Jean-François Millet, Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet.

Italy, meanwhile, moved into the fiercest phase of its third heatwave of the summer. Seven cities, including Florence, Rome, Bologna and Turin, face red alerts by Wednesday, and forecasters expect 39C to 41C across much of the centre-south and Sardinia, with local peaks above 42C. The wider European picture looked grim: France recorded 250 fire starts in one day, Germany counted 99 drowning deaths in June, and the UK remained under an extreme-heat alert.

Europe is discovering that heat is no longer background weather but an operating condition for forests, power grids, hospitals and workers.

A fire engulfed the Rong Beer Na Lat Phrao pub in Bangkok’s Chatuchak district shortly before midnight on Sunday, killing at least 27 people and sending 63 to hospital, 22 of them in critical condition. Officials said many victims died of smoke inhalation, and rescuers found several near the toilets at the rear of the single-storey venue, where they had fled but could not escape.

Investigators are examining an electrical fault in an air-conditioning unit above the ceiling, as well as gas canisters and venue wiring. Bangkok Governor Chadchart Sittipunt said flammable ceiling and decorative materials helped the blaze spread quickly; Thai reports pointed to low-quality acoustic panels, and older images showed plastic plants above the stage.

The most damning question may be simpler than ignition. City officials said investigators found evidence that the main entrance and emergency exits were blocked by furniture and stored materials, even though an April inspection had recorded two marked emergency exits and passed the venue on health requirements. Thailand has seen deadly entertainment-venue fires before, including Bangkok’s 2009 nightclub blaze that killed at least 65 people.

The pub had music, customers and paperwork; what it lacked, when seconds mattered, was a way out.

France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom summoned or moved to summon Russian envoys after security agencies concluded that Russia’s FSB orchestrated a long-running cyber campaign across roughly a dozen European countries. The operations targeted government networks, critical infrastructure, railways and logistics chains, and European governments paired the diplomatic protest with sanctions on Russian individuals and entities.

The details give the story its weight. Dutch intelligence said Russian actors hacked private cameras along routes used to transport military goods to Ukraine, allowing remote surveillance of shipments. French officials said ministries, companies and infrastructure operators were targeted, while reports from Poland described sabotage of power plants and railway infrastructure.

The sanctions net widened beyond one hacking crew. The EU listed nine people and four entities, while the UK sanctioned 24 individuals and entities linked to Russian military and intelligence structures. Germany attributed the campaign to Turla, a technically advanced cyber-espionage group, and Moscow answered by summoning Germany’s outgoing ambassador to protest Berlin’s support for Ukraine.

This is diplomacy conducted with subpoenas, sanctions lists and server logs, and the test is whether public attribution can deter sabotage that was designed to stay deniable.

Volkswagen chief executive Oliver Blume tried to calm Germany’s car heartland after a bruising week in Wolfsburg. He told Bild am Sonntag that he wanted to avoid closing German factories and pointed to a 20% fall in average production-site costs over the past year, as well as more than 50,000 orders in four weeks for the new entry-level ID. Polo family.

The reassurance landed after his Zukunftsplan, or future plan, was rejected by the supervisory board. Worker representatives and Lower Saxony together hold a 12-to-7 majority on the board, and the works council accused Blume of briefing management while withholding information from tens of thousands of rank-and-file employees affected by possible closures and job cuts.

The stakes are large even by Volkswagen standards. The plants seen as vulnerable, Zwickau, Emden, Audi’s Neckarsulm site and the commercial-vehicle plant in Hannover, employ 40,000 people. Blume has already announced that annual production capacity will fall by one million vehicles to nine million by 2030, the model range will be halved by 2035, and 5,000 of 21,000 management jobs will go by 2030.

The market is not waiting politely. Analyst Frank Schwope said second-quarter global sales fell 9%, with sales in China down 37%, and media reports have put possible worldwide job losses far above official figures. Volkswagen is trying to cut a giant company down to electric-vehicle size without provoking its own workers into treating the steering wheel as theirs.