Evening Brief, Sunday 2 August

Spain’s enclave of Ceuta absorbed a sudden mass crossing from Morocco, with Spanish accounts putting arrivals around 50,000 to 60,000 people and the confirmed death toll at 72 by Sunday. Many victims drowned while trying to swim around the Tarajal border fence, while reception facilities built for 512 people held more than 700 and over 1,000 waited outside. Madrid said more than 48,000 people had returned to Morocco by Sunday, but the sea search continued and some reports put the toll higher.

Pedro Sánchez framed the episode as a direct assault on Spanish sovereignty and blamed smugglers for selling young people a lethal promise. Italy and Denmark then gathered 22 EU states behind a letter demanding stronger external controls, faster returns and action against what they called pull factors, including Spain’s recent migrant regularisation. Giorgia Meloni threatened extraordinary measures against Spain, while Madrid accused partners of turning solidarity into theatre.

The trigger remains contested. Spanish sources pointed to rumours spread on TikTok and Facebook, a court ruling limiting summary returns, and the crucial fact that Moroccan security forces did not stop the movement for hours. Morocco’s official silence now carries diplomatic weight, because Ceuta has again exposed how border management in Europe depends not only on fences, but on bargains with neighbours that can suddenly go soft. The humanitarian disaster will test whether the EU can police its frontier without turning every national shock into a Schengen loyalty test.

Donald Trump abruptly said he had cancelled planned US strikes on Iran after Tehran and other Middle Eastern countries supposedly asked him to stand down, claiming that the parameters of a deal had been reached to end the five-month war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s Mehr news agency rejected the claim as false, while Fars quoted a source close to nuclear negotiations saying the strait would stay closed as long as the United States maintained hostile actions. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had urged de-escalation in a call with Donald Trump, reflecting Gulf fears that a wider fight would hit energy infrastructure.

The mood was no steadier in Gaza. Israeli warplanes struck residential buildings overnight into Sunday, killing at least eight people according to Palestinian civil defence officials, while some outlets put the number at 13. The strikes followed publication of a 15-point roadmap by Trump’s Board of Peace, which calls for a halt in military operations, a gradual Israeli withdrawal and the dismantling of armed groups including Hamas. Hamas says weapons storage can follow a halt to Israeli operations and withdrawal; an Israeli official told Reuters that withdrawal requires genuine disarmament first.

Israeli ministers also undercut the idea that a stop to fighting had arrived. Eli Cohen said no deal had been reached to stop attacks on Gaza, and Itamar Ben-Gvir argued Israel should continue assassinating Hamas leaders. Taken together, the Iran and Gaza files show Trump announcing leverage faster than the parties accept it. A ceasefire that exists mainly in statements can still move markets and armies, but it cannot yet move frightened civilians out of danger.

Hungary began shutting down the Paks nuclear plant as the Danube fell to record lows, cutting output from 2,000 megawatts to 240 megawatts at a station that normally supplies around 40 percent of the country’s annual electricity. The river at Paks dropped to about minus 133 centimetres on the local gauge, near the last unit’s safety threshold of minus 134 centimetres, and forecasts suggested worse to come. Peter Magyar warned that the first full shutdown in the plant’s 44-year history could last weeks.

Romania attacked the same problem with explosives and stone. Its authorities prepared to detonate the Pârjoaia rock and sink four loaded barges to redirect more Danube water toward the Cernavodă nuclear plant, where one reactor had already shut and the second faced risk. At Romania’s Danube entry point, flow fell below 1,600 cubic metres per second against a multiannual average of 4,700, with a further drop to about 1,450 forecast by 7 August.

Germany saw the commercial version of the same squeeze. Rhine gauges hit or approached records in Cologne, Duisburg-Ruhrort, Düsseldorf, Bonn and Kaub, forcing barges to reduce loads, suspending ferries and raising warnings about fuel supply. Companies can split cargo among more vessels, but that pushes up freight costs just as heat raises electricity demand. Europe built much of its inland energy and transport system on the quiet assumption that great rivers keep working; this summer is editing that assumption in public.

Japan and the United States have taken joint action to support the yen, Japanese officials told Reuters, in what would be the first coordinated intervention by the two countries since 2011. This time the aim is the opposite of that post-Tohoku move: Tokyo and Washington are trying to lift a currency that has fallen to its weakest level against the dollar since 1986. The operation was still under way, one official said, though neither Japan’s finance ministry nor the US Treasury had formally confirmed the action on Sunday.

The scale looks large even by Japan’s intervention-heavy standards. Reuters reported that Tokyo may have sold as much as $58.97 billion during the New York session on Thursday, while Bloomberg read Bank of Japan money-market data as implying an operation of about 8.45 trillion yen. That would exceed the previous single-session high of 5.92 trillion yen in April 2024. The Bank of Japan held its policy rate at 1.0 percent by an 8-to-1 vote, but Governor Kazuo Ueda left markets thinking a September rise remained possible.

US involvement gives the move extra force. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had said the yen seemed very undervalued, and a Reuters photograph showed a cabinet-meeting notepad listing a possible purchase of $5 billion to $10 billion in yen. Analysts read Washington’s interest as partly defensive: a disorderly yen and Japanese bond sell-off could feed into US Treasury yields. The intervention can buy time, but only policy can buy credibility. Currency desks have now been warned that the yen is no longer just Japan’s problem.