Evening Brief, Thursday 13 August

Europe’s summer stopped looking like weather and started behaving like infrastructure policy. Britain prepared for 38C under amber heat health alerts, with train operators warning passengers to travel only for essential journeys and fire crews fighting nearly 1,000 wildfires this year. France placed 78 departments on orange heatwave alert on August 12 and expected 80 by August 13, while restrictions applied to the homes of 62 million people, or 94% of the metropolitan population.

The heat also reached the electricity system. Romania began a controlled shutdown of Unit 2 at Cernavoda after the Danube fell to record lows, while Unit 1 had already stopped in late July. The plant normally produces about a fifth of Romania’s electricity, and the government turned to lignite, imports and voluntary demand cuts as automakers Dacia and Ford paused production. Plant director Romeo Urjan gave little comfort.

Hungary’s Paks plant, which supplies about a third of national demand, cut output earlier this month as the same river sank. The pattern is blunt: Europe built much of its power and transport system around rivers that now carry less water when demand peaks. Climate policy here no longer sits in ministerial speeches; it sits in cooling pipes, hospital wards and railway timetables.

Vladimir Putin visited Iturup, the largest of the southern Kuril Islands, in his first personal trip to the disputed chain, and Russia made sure the symbolism travelled. He toured a fish plant, a hospital and a school where children learn to assemble and operate drones, then met the Sakhalin governor about support for Russian forces and their families. Japan protested at once, with Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi saying the visit had worsened public sentiment toward Moscow.

The visit revived a dispute frozen since Soviet forces occupied the islands after Japan’s surrender in 1945, and it landed at a time when Moscow has reinforced military positions there and suspended peace treaty talks after Japan joined sanctions over Ukraine. Russian state media framed the trip as a final answer to the dispute, but Tokyo still calls the islands an inherent part of Japan.

Poland meanwhile said its security services arrested a Russian citizen recruited by Russian intelligence to kill a US-Ukrainian dual citizen in Warsaw. Donald Tusk said the plot had reached a late stage and that the target was considered inconvenient by Vladimir Putin’s regime.

The two stories do different things with the same message. One uses a presidential visit to harden a territorial claim; the other, if Poland’s account holds, uses covert violence to warn enemies abroad. Moscow is turning old frontiers and new exiles into live fronts.

Colombia’s earthquake rescue effort crossed its grim 72-hour mark. The 7.4-magnitude quake struck near San José del Palmar in Chocó on August 10, and by Wednesday the government had confirmed 265 deaths, 3,494 injuries and 496 missing people. The disaster destroyed 11,347 homes, damaged 53,526 more and affected 24,324 families across 403 municipalities, while more than 150 aftershocks kept survivors and rescuers on edge.

In Cali, crews shifted at many sites from rescue to debris removal after survival was ruled out at 20 locations. Workers used silence, microphones and sonometers to listen for signs of life, then faced the cruel arithmetic of time. President Abelardo De La Espriella, who had taken office three days before the quake, declared an economic emergency and three days of national mourning, opening room to redirect budgets and raise taxes despite campaigning on spending cuts.

Chocó’s poverty multiplied the damage. Landslides blocked roads, a hospital collapsed near the epicentre and some communities require days of river travel to reach. Aid from the United States, the European Union and El Salvador began to arrive, while officials said they would accept only certified search-and-rescue teams. Leyner Palacios captured the deeper weakness behind the immediate disaster.

The quake will test more than emergency crews. Colombia now has to prove that a state can arrive after the rubble falls, not just after the cameras do.

Spain moved from emergency reception to enforcement in Ceuta. Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said about 5,000 irregular migrants remain in the autonomous city after the mass crossing of July 30, when 72,000 people entered. He also confirmed 1,898 registered unaccompanied minors, a figure that could rise, while promising that the vast majority of adults would be expelled to Morocco.

Madrid sent more officers and promised faster asylum decisions. More than 500 claims have already been resolved, mostly rejected, and the government is seeking judicial authority to substitute some sentences with immediate expulsion. Grande-Marlaska also said no one entering Ceuta or Melilla irregularly would stay, move to the peninsula or be regularised. That word mattered because critics argue expectations of future papers helped draw people toward the border.

The minors create the hardest part. The government wants family reunification where possible and has planned regional redistribution inside Spain, backed by €25 million for care in Ceuta. Several regional governments have resisted, and Ceuta’s own facilities are far beyond capacity. Morocco received praise from Madrid for cooperation, while the European Commission said the priority is border strengthening and daily repatriation rather than date-specific crisis management.

Local anger met Grande-Marlaska with whistles and insults, and opposition pressure on Pedro Sánchez’s government will grow if identification and removals drag. The border may be calm today, but Ceuta has become a small city carrying a national argument about asylum, deterrence and who bears the cost when Europe’s edge moves overnight.

Three data stories pointed in the same uncomfortable direction: control beats consent when systems move faster than rules. Poland confirmed a cyberattack on MyDr, a private supplier of medical-record software used by 12,000 healthcare facilities, with data on nearly 19 million citizens stolen. The haul exceeded 2 TB and included names, PESEL numbers, contact details, visit notes and prescriptions. Donald Tusk said the attack looked criminal rather than foreign-backed.

In New York, The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation sued Donald Trump over Truth API, a paid service that sells machine-readable early access to his Truth Social posts for roughly $60,000 to $100,000 a month. The feed covers high-profile official accounts and has attracted more than 10 subscribers, mainly high-frequency trading firms, according to Trump Media. The plaintiffs argue that official government information should not reach paying customers first.

Twitch supplied the consumer version of the same argument. The Amazon-owned platform switched on a setting that lets Amazon train generative AI models on streams, clips, chat, images and text unless users opt out. Mike Minton, Twitch’s head of product, said the quiet part plainly.

Patients, voters and creators face different harms, but the bargain looks familiar. Data that people thought they owned has become either loot, leverage or raw material.