Evening Brief, Tuesday 21 July

The United States launched a tenth consecutive night of strikes on Iran, targeting command centres, maritime assets, missile and drone launch sites and air-defence systems, while Iranian media reported explosions near Qeshm Island and Bandar-e Abbas. Iran said it struck Camp Arifjan in Kuwait with surface-to-surface missiles, and British maritime officials reported another tanker attack off Oman that forced a crew to abandon ship near the Strait of Hormuz.

The military arithmetic is now bleeding into the commercial one. Kpler data cited in the reports showed traffic through Hormuz fell to about 10 vessels a day between Friday and Sunday, a striking contraction for a waterway that normally carries roughly a fifth of globally traded crude oil and gas. Brent traded above $88 a barrel, US gasoline averaged $4 a gallon, and shipowners began paying war-risk prices for passages that crews can legally refuse.

The human toll also rose. The Pentagon identified more American dead from operations linked to Iranian rocket and drone attacks, taking the acknowledged US military toll to 17, while Donald Trump promised retaliation for each soldier killed.

Qatar floated a 10-day ceasefire, and Iran's interior minister travelled to Pakistan, another mediator, but the collapsed interim deal shows how quickly paper arrangements burn in the Gulf. The Strait of Hormuz is no longer merely a chokepoint for oil; it has become the daily scoreboard of a conflict that neither side yet seems able to stop.

Andy Burnham built his first British cabinet with a flourish and a broom. He named John Healey chancellor, moved Ed Miliband to the Foreign Office, returned Angela Rayner to housing and removed several allies of Keir Starmer, while announcing a cut to VAT on domestic electricity bills from October and scrapping the Digital ID programme to pay for it.

The fiscal welcome was mixed, which is usually the Treasury's way of saying hello. Britain borrowed £16bn in June, less than economists expected, but the April-June deficit still reached £57.6bn, £2.7bn above the official forecast, and public debt sat close to £3tn. Burnham recommitted to fiscal rules while hinting at room inside them, leaving Healey to square cheaper electricity with bond-market patience.

In Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega removed ambiguity rather than ministers. Speaking at a Sandinista rally, the 80-year-old president said there would be no more elections and promised laws to block opponents he described as coup-plotters and traitors. Presidential elections had been scheduled for November 2027, after an earlier extension of the co-presidents' mandate held by Ortega and Rosario Murillo.

The contrast is crude but useful: London is changing leaders, jobs and taxes under noisy democratic pressure, while Managua is turning the absence of fair competition into an announced governing principle. One system has a cramped room for manoeuvre; the other is bricking up the exit.

A federal judge in Oakland halted Paramount Skydance's $110bn acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery for at least 14 days, after 12 states argued the deal would weaken competition in film and television. Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín barred integration steps, including sensitive information-sharing and job cuts, and set an August 3 hearing on a longer injunction.

The states say the combined group would hold roughly 27% of film distribution and more than 30% of the blockbuster segment, while Paramount argues the merger would create a stronger rival to Netflix and Disney. The clock also matters: if closing slips beyond September 30, Paramount faces a $650m quarterly ticking fee plus roughly $7m a day under the merger agreement.

Brussels struck a different kind of giant. The European Commission fined AliExpress €550m, the largest penalty yet under the Digital Services Act, after finding that the Alibaba-owned platform failed to keep dangerous toys, unsafe cosmetics and counterfeit goods away from European consumers. AliExpress called the fine disproportionate and must file a compliance plan within three months.

These cases show regulators moving from speeches to stoppages and fines. Hollywood consolidation now faces state-level antitrust resistance, while cheap cross-border e-commerce faces a European bill for looking away too long.

Spain prepared for its third major heatwave of the summer, with AEMET warning that a cut-off low northwest of the peninsula and high pressure over North Africa would pull very hot, dry and dusty air across the country. Seven autonomous communities issued orange warnings, and Murcia city could reach 45°C on Wednesday, while tropical nights were forecast in Barcelona, Palma, Valencia, Murcia and Granada.

The same weather pattern raised fire danger. In Guadalajara, the La Mierla fire burned more than 26,000 hectares, carved a perimeter of about 120km and forced evacuations in 33 localities, displacing around 1,200 residents. Castilla-La Mancha officials called it the largest fire in the region's history, and crews shifted from mostly defensive work around villages to more offensive containment operations as winds and heat kept the blaze volatile.

Teruel added another front. A wildfire in the Sierra de Majalinos expanded from about 170 hectares on Monday evening to roughly 1,000 hectares by Tuesday morning, prompting the preventive evacuation of Molinos and the deployment of Spain's Military Emergency Unit. Low scrubland reduced some fuel, but falling humidity and shifting winds kept commanders on edge.

This is the hard part of climate adaptation: forecasts can warn people, but emergency systems still have to move bodies, livestock and aircraft faster than heat moves flame.