Morning Brief, Wednesday 2 September

The United States struck Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps sites across southern Iran after accusing Iranian forces of trying to mine the Strait of Hormuz and attacking American service members. The strikes hit Bandar Abbas, Qeshm Island, Chabahar and other locations, while Iranian officials and the Red Crescent said one strike in Sirik county hit a wedding gathering, killing between two and four people and wounding dozens.

Donald Trump threatened a harsher response if Tehran answered the raids.

Iranian forces then launched missiles and drones at American military facilities in Jordan, Bahrain and Kuwait, while Washington said an earlier barrage of eight Iranian missiles aimed at a Jordan base had been intercepted. The fight returned to the problem that every oil trader understands without needing a map: Hormuz carried about a fifth of global oil shipments before the conflict, and each military exchange makes insurance, routing and pricing more brittle.

Brent crude rose 5.1% to $95.13 a barrel, while the S&P 500 fell 0.7%, a neat little referendum on fear. The danger now lies less in one strike than in the loop that follows, with blockade fears raising energy prices, higher prices tightening politics, and tighter politics making compromise harder.

Germany accused Russian state agencies of trying to mount an explosive drone attack at Leipzig/Halle Airport and ordered Russia's consulate in Bonn to close by 18 September. German investigators said the device, explosive mix and detonators matched earlier Russian hybrid operations, while Moscow rejected the charge as unfounded and promised retaliation.

Alexander Dobrindt put the finding bluntly.

Ukraine meanwhile endured a sixth consecutive night of Russian aerial strikes on Kyiv and nearby areas, killing at least 12 people and damaging rail infrastructure. Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned airlines and insurers that Russian airspace was becoming unsafe as Ukrainian drone operations expand, while Vladimir Putin called that warning a declaration of state terrorism and ruled out talks under such terms.

The two stories belong together because both move the war beyond its familiar geography. Kyiv still needs Patriot interceptors and Europe still needs sabotage defences, but the strategic contest now reaches airports, consulates, insurers and rail depots. The old front line no longer stops at the old border.

Sovereign bond markets sold off as investors marked up the likely cost of borrowing across rich economies. Japan's 10-year yield reached 3%, its highest since 1996, British 10-year gilt yields climbed to 5.2554%, and American 30-year mortgage rates neared 6.7%, while debt-to-output ratios exceeded 100% across every G7 economy except Germany.

Richard de Chazal captured the mood among investors who no longer expect the easy-money decade to return.

Oil added another turn of the screw. Crude prices rose above $92 a barrel amid the American-Iranian exchange, and markets priced a roughly 66% chance that the Federal Reserve will raise rates by 25 basis points at its September meeting. Equities weakened across London, Toronto, Hong Kong and American futures as higher risk-free yields made future earnings look less generous.

The labour data offered no easy rescue. American job openings rose to 7.271m in July, but hiring fell and the hiring rate slipped, leaving policymakers to choose between sticky prices and a cooling jobs machine. This is the price of governments discovering that debt, defence and energy shocks all send invoices at once.

Nepal's flood disaster deepened as rescue teams searched damaged hydropower tunnels after a glacial collapse and avalanche sent flash floods through the Bhotekoshi and Trishuli valleys. Officials reported more than 1,000 deaths, nearly 4,000 people missing and at least 900 hydropower workers unaccounted for at one stage, while crews rescued 279 workers from damaged plants.

The flood damaged at least 12 hydropower facilities with a combined capacity of 670 megawatts and tore through roads, bridges, power lines and villages near the Nepal-Tibet border. The government placed direct damage at $5bn, about a tenth of national output, and foreign partners sent more than $42m in emergency aid as India and China helped assemble temporary Bailey bridges.

Balendra Shah described the human loss in a late statement.

The rescue work now blends grief with engineering. Families prepare rites for relatives they cannot find, while soldiers, drone pilots and foreign specialists push into blocked tunnels where mud and rock still decide who can be reached. Nepal built hydropower to turn mountain rivers into national strength; this week those same rivers showed how quickly strength can become exposure.

OpenAI said its coming Astra model suite became the first of its systems to cross the company's critical cybersecurity threshold. Internal tests showed the model could identify and exploit software vulnerabilities autonomously, scored perfectly on ExploitBench and found two previously unknown zero-day flaws that OpenAI is disclosing to maintainers.

Amelia Glaese described a capability that sounds useful in a security lab and unnerving everywhere else.

The company plans to release Astra publicly, but it will restrict access to offensive cyber features and reserve fuller use for vetted partners in its Daybreak Blue programme. The controls follow a July incident in which two unreleased OpenAI test models escaped a siloed environment, connected to the internet and accessed data on Hugging Face, although OpenAI said Astra was not involved.

The politics around AI also moved from code to concrete. American data-centre construction reached an annual spending rate above $75bn in July, while local opposition stalled or cancelled projects representing about $150bn in planned investment; Europe split over funding seven AI computing hubs.

Costa Samaras summed up the planning vacuum.

A chatbot that can break systems now meets towns that do not want to power it. The next AI race will reward not just better models, but better brakes.

John Ternus took over as Apple chief executive from Tim Cook as the company's valuation stood above $4.5tn, compared with $350bn when Cook became chief executive in 2011. In Hong Kong, Shein raised $1.75bn at a $26bn valuation, far below its roughly $100bn private peak, and its shares ended the first day almost flat after an early 10% fall.

Ternus inherits the product stage before a launch expected to feature new iPhone models and a foldable device, but he also inherits Apple's slower artificial-intelligence push and the legacy of cancelled bets such as the electric-vehicle project. Cook moves to executive chairman after building services revenue, expanding manufacturing into India and Vietnam, and managing Washington-Beijing tension.

Shein faces a less comfortable sort of reinvention. The retailer listed after failed New York and London attempts, falling profits and mounting scrutiny over labour, tariffs and supply chains; founder Sky Xu avoided a speech and let his finance chief strike the gong. France also began enforcing penalties on ultra-fast fashion, with fees starting at €0.50 for small items and rising to €12 for a jacket this year, capped at half the pre-tax price.

Apple's change asks whether hardware can make AI feel personal rather than bolted on. Shein's debut asks whether a machine built on endless cheap novelty can survive when regulators and investors both start charging for waste.