Evening Brief, Saturday 8 August

Spain imposed temporary checks on flights and ships from Italy from midnight on August 8, retaliating after Rome refused to lift controls on arrivals from Spain. Police checked documents at aircraft doors and on tarmacs, while Madrid told Brussels it would run the measures until September 7 unless conditions changed. Italy linked its own checks to the July 30 rush into Ceuta, when about 72,000 people crossed from Morocco into the Spanish enclave, and Giorgia Meloni’s government said it would not accept ultimatums over security.

• Crossed into Ceuta72,000
• Returned to Morocco70,000
• Remain, ministry estimate2,000
• Registered unaccompanied minors1,342

The numbers still wobble. Spain says roughly 70,000 people have returned to Morocco and about 2,000 remain in Ceuta, while local officials put the remaining population closer to 3,000-6,000. The deaths also vary by source, from more than 80 to at least 141 in human-rights accounts. The city must also care for unaccompanied minors, with one official tally at 1,342, while Vox-led regional officials threatened legal challenges against transfers to mainland Spain.

Brussels turned its fire on the platforms, after viral posts on TikTok, WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook claimed the border was open and accommodation waited in Spain. Henna Virkkunen met Meta and TikTok representatives and demanded stronger crisis protocols.

“Especially in crisis situations, platforms must act decisively to preserve the integrity of the digital space. Monitoring must be intensified and cooperation with fact-checkers must be strengthened.”

The quarrel matters because Schengen does not fail all at once; it frays when governments decide that neighbours, algorithms and bad data make open borders too risky.

Ukraine said Russia launched 151 drones overnight, with air defences downing or intercepting 135 of them. Regional authorities reported at least 12 people killed and more than 80 wounded across the country, including a family home in Puchiwka where two grandparents and their three-year-old grandson died. Volodymyr Zelenskyy again asked for more sanctions, anti-ballistic systems and interceptor missiles, arguing that Moscow is exploiting shortages of Patriot ammunition.

• Launched by Russia151
• Intercepted by Ukraine135
• Not intercepted16

Moscow said it targeted a Ukrainian arms-production facility and a fuel depot, but it supplied no public evidence. Kyiv says Russian strikes hit civilian areas, while Ukraine’s own long-range strikes have damaged Russian oil facilities for months. In Krasnodar, Russian authorities said five people were injured after debris from a falling drone caused a fire at the Ilsky oil refinery.

The war also brushed Bulgaria’s border. A drone entered from the north and exploded near Kardam, about 1,000 metres from a compressor station on the Trans-Balkan gas pipeline, with no casualties or infrastructure damage reported. Bulgaria’s defence ministry identified the wreckage as a Maya decoy drone, a type widely used by Ukrainian forces, but said nothing yet suggested a deliberate act. Retired Romanian general Virgil Balaceanu said the flight path still needed explaining.

“It is hard for me to explain. Even the Bulgarian prime minister cannot explain it, and he is an aviation general, and pilots work with radars and anti-aircraft defense systems.”

Castles rarely decide modern wars; stray machines near pipelines decide how nervous allies become when the front line leaks into their airspace.

The US Senate confirmed Todd Blanche as attorney general by 50 votes to 49, putting Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer in charge of the Justice Department. Every Democrat opposed him, as did Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, while Bill Cassidy supplied the decisive vote after Blanche narrowed two contested IRS-related protections. Blanche abandoned a proposed $1.8bn anti-weaponisation fund and limited tax-audit immunity for Donald Trump, his elder sons and the Trump Organization to past filings, not future declarations.

Republican unease did not vanish. Lisa Murkowski said the country needed an attorney general able to restrain the administration, and Democrats argued Blanche had not stopped acting like Trump’s lawyer. Dick Durbin compressed the objection into one line.

“The attorney general is supposed to be the lawyer for the people.”

Blanche’s defenders argued that his closeness to Donald Trump might let him push back more effectively than an outsider. That is a generous theory, but Washington now gets to test it in real time.

A separate court ruling drew another boundary. The DC Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an injunction blocking Trump’s roughly $400m White House ballroom until Congress authorises it, saying a president cannot unilaterally demolish and rebuild major parts of a publicly owned historic property. Trump called the ruling a national disgrace and vowed to seek Supreme Court review.

“This unjust decision must be overturned by the Supreme Court in its entirety.”

The two cases will define whether Trump’s second-term power runs through institutions, or simply around them when the walls get in the way.

Burgundy began harvesting crémant grapes on August 8, beating the previous early record of August 13, set only four years ago. Marc Sangoy, who leads the Cave de Lugny cooperative in Saône-et-Loire, said he had never seen a harvest so early in nearly 40 years as a winemaker.

“The records are falling. It's going fast.”

Still, drought and heat have also slowed maturation for some grapes, so whites may wait until August 18-20 and reds until August 20-25. The vines are moving faster, then stalling, which is a fine agricultural description of a warming climate.

• 1354-171917
• 1720-198753
• Since 19885
• 21st century2.5

The deeper story comes from Beaune’s archives. Climate historian Thomas Labbé compiled harvest dates from 1354 to today, a series of more than 670 years. Extreme heat years appeared every 17 years from 1354 to 1719, every 53 years from 1720 to 1987, every five years since 1988, and about every two and a half years this century. Four of the ten hottest years since 1354 came in the 21st century: 2003, 2018, 2020 and 2025.

“In the last two decades, the exceptional has become the norm.”

Spain offered the daily weather version of the same lesson. Orange heat alerts covered parts of Galicia and Ciudad Real, where temperatures were expected to hit 40C, while forecasts pointed to 41C in Ciudad Real and highs near 38-41C through the weekend in central and southern areas. Wine, work and public health now share the same calendar problem: August keeps arriving before people and crops have finished preparing for it.

Iran and Oman moved closer to a deal over the Strait of Hormuz, according to both a US official and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, but Tehran quickly narrowed expectations. Abbas Araghchi said an agreement was very close, while warning that progress did not mean reopening was imminent. The Revolutionary Guards went further, saying passage depended on Iran’s own mechanisms and conditions, not simply on Oman’s mediation. Before the war, about one in five barrels of oil consumed worldwide passed through the strait, so every sentence from Tehran now travels straight into energy markets.

Washington said it would lift its blockade of Iranian ports once commercial shipping resumed without impediments, but Iran linked reopening to wider demands, including US compliance with a June memorandum and the unfreezing of Iranian funds. The hardline message was not subtle: Iran wants leverage, not just tolls. Analyst Abdolreza Davari put it plainly.

“More than revenue from the strait, Iran wants to confirm its management and sovereignty over the strait.”

The region is hedging accordingly. Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan signed the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, promising that an armed attack on one would count as an attack on all. Turkey said the pact targeted no country, while Iranian lawmaker Ebrahim Rezaei dismissed it as paper security and urged Riyadh to change its policies. The pact gives Saudi Arabia partners with Turkish military weight and Pakistani nuclear status, while also signalling that faith in American protection has thinned. The Hormuz bargain may reopen a waterway; the Mecca pact shows how many governments now doubt anyone else will keep it open for them.