International News Bulletin — August 4, 2026

Politics

• Trump sets a Hormuz deadline as Qatar cites progress – US President Donald Trump pressed Iran on Tuesday to conclude an arrangement with Oman on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz as soon as that day or face air strikes, telling reporters he wanted “to give them every last chance before decapitation”, Bloomberg reported. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said a deal could come “today or tomorrow”, and Qatar said its mediators were working to end the hostilities, according to Reuters coverage carried by Investing.com. Iran’s foreign ministry maintains that it is negotiating with Oman rather than with Washington, and that it wants control over inbound traffic through the waterway.
• EU ministers back Spain after the Ceuta border surge – European Union interior ministers held an emergency videoconference on Tuesday, chaired by Irish justice minister Jim O’Callaghan whose country holds the rotating presidency, and concluded that the Schengen travel area had not been compromised by last week’s mass crossing into the Spanish enclave. The meeting was told that about 72,000 people reached Ceuta by 30 July, that roughly 70,000 had since been returned to Morocco and that the Spanish government counts 75 deaths, figures well above Rabat’s own tally. Italy and Denmark had pressed for Spain’s suspension from Schengen, a demand Madrid rejected and the Commission treated as legally impossible, and migration policy is now set for the October European Council.
• Philippine military confirms Chinese drills at Scarborough Shoal – The Armed Forces of the Philippines said on Tuesday that People’s Liberation Army Navy vessels had exercised inside Bajo de Masinloc on 31 July and 1 August, reversing the national government’s rejection of the Chinese account a day earlier. Rear Admiral Roy Vincent Trinidad, the military’s West Philippine Sea spokesman, said five warships, a replenishment ship, two hovercraft, two helicopters and an unspecified number of fighter aircraft were tracked, and that after “numerous fake messages” this was the first time such drills had been observed. USNI News reported that the Chinese force included a Type 052D destroyer, a Type 071 landing platform dock and H-6K bombers carrying anti-ship missiles.
• Israel counts 104 approved settlements before the October vote – Defence Minister Israel Katz told a Likud meeting in late July that the governing coalition had approved 104 settlements in the occupied West Bank since 2022, alongside roughly 160 settlement farms, Al Jazeera reported on Tuesday. The United Nations has described settlement creation and attacks on Palestinians as being at an all-time high, and monitors counted 2,256 incidents against Palestinians and their property in July, of which 1,458 were attributed to the Israeli army and 798 to settlers. Israel votes for the 26th Knesset in October, and analyst Yossi Mekelberg said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs the hard right and the settler movement to hold his bloc together.

Economy

• Wall Street closes at records as the Nasdaq jumps 2.6 percent – The S&P 500 finished Tuesday at 7,736.52, up 1.79 percent, the Dow Jones Industrial Average at 54,085.88, up 1.71 percent, and the Nasdaq Composite at 26,584.99, up 2.59 percent, according to Yahoo Finance, which said the advance carried the main indexes to record highs. European equities also closed higher, with Germany’s DAX up 0.98 percent and London’s FTSE 100 up 0.37 percent, as investors priced in progress toward reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Amazon fell more than 2 percent after a filing disclosed that Jeff Bezos had moved to sell about 15 million shares worth some $4.07 billion under a plan adopted in November 2025, a day after the company first passed a $3 trillion valuation.
• Crude settles sharply lower for a second session – West Texas Intermediate settled at $75.70 a barrel on Tuesday, down 5.78 percent, and Brent at $79.23, down 5.42 percent, according to Investing.com, a second consecutive session of heavy losses. Reuters coverage carried on the same site attributed the fall to a run of headlines suggesting a United States and Iran understanding was close, including Bessent’s remark that an agreement could land within days. Trading Economics quoted a marginally different WTI level of $76.14 for the day, and traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb was reported little changed.
• Palantir shares jump about 30 percent on a revenue surge – Palantir Technologies reported second-quarter revenue of $1.935 billion, up 93 percent year on year, and adjusted earnings of $0.41 a share against a $0.35 consensus, CNBC reported. United States revenue rose 115 percent to $1.573 billion, with US commercial revenue up 149 percent to $764 million, and the company said it closed 220 deals worth at least $1 million each. Palantir raised full-year revenue guidance to about $8.15 billion, and its shares rose roughly 30 percent on Tuesday, on course for their best single session.
• Twenty-five US states sue over the new global tariffs – A coalition of 25 states filed suit in the US Court of International Trade against tariffs of 10 to 12.5 percent imposed on 60 trading partners, asking the court to declare them unlawful, halt their collection and order refunds of duties already paid. New York Attorney General Letitia James, who announced the filing with Governor Kathy Hochul, said the administration was “once again trying to illegally raise taxes on families and businesses” after losing at the Supreme Court. The duties cover countries accounting for 99.4 percent of US imports, according to the complaint as reported by NBC News and Al Jazeera.

World News

• Guatemala evacuates villages as Fuego turns more explosive – Guatemala declared an orange alert, its second-highest level, after the Fuego volcano erupted on Monday and intensified through the day, with the disaster agency Conred saying 659 people had been evacuated from eight villages and about ten more communities were due to follow. The volcanology institute Insivumeh said pyroclastic density currents travelled 5 to 7 kilometres down the Seca ravine and ash plumes rose about 6 kilometres, warning that the volcano was “moving towards a more explosive phase”. National Route 14 was closed and classes were suspended in nearby towns; an eruption of the same volcano in 2018 killed 194 people and left 234 missing.
• Drone strikes kill at least five in Russia and in Ukraine – Officials on each side reported five deaths on Tuesday, with Moscow region governor Andrei Vorobyov saying five people were killed and ten wounded, most of the damage falling on the Chekhov district where fires broke out at the Novoselki industrial zone. Ukrainian authorities reported five killed including two children, and UNICEF said attacks that kill and injure children must stop; a Monday strike on the Black Sea resort of Arkhipo-Osipovka killed seven people, four of them children, and wounded 58. Turkey renewed its call for safe passage in the Black Sea after two Turkish-owned ships were hit leaving Novorossiysk, warning that the war’s spread threatens merchant shipping and global food supply.
• Gaza buries 112 members of one extended family – Thousands attended a funeral in Gaza City on Tuesday for 112 members of the al-Hassayna family, also known as Abu Sharia, whose bodies were recovered from the rubble of homes destroyed in the Sabra neighbourhood. Palestinian authorities said 308 members of the extended family were killed on 22 November 2023 when Israeli air strikes brought down a cluster of apartment buildings, and that roughly half the dead had been recovered earlier while 153 bodies remained under the debris. Gaza authorities described the procession to the Sheikh Shaaban cemetery as the largest mass funeral in the territory since October 2023.
• Three lions die at a Tokyo zoo amid record heat – Tama Zoological Park in Hino, in the western Tokyo metropolis, said three lionesses died within a week of suspected heat stress, a three-year-old on 28 July, an 11-year-old three days later and a 15-year-old on Sunday, all showing dehydration and multiple organ failure. Ten lions in total were treated with water sprays, industrial fans, intravenous fluids and medication after the exhibit was closed in late July. Parts of Japan recorded at least 40 degrees Celsius on five consecutive days in late July, the longest such run on record, and Yangsan in South Korea reached 42.5 degrees on Sunday, its highest in 122 years of measurement.
• Red Cross says its Sudan appeal is 35 percent funded – The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said on Tuesday from Geneva that only 35 percent of its Sudan emergency appeal was funded, more than 1,200 days into the war. Special envoy Derk Segaar said 35 million people need humanitarian assistance, 9 million are internally displaced and 4.5 million have fled the country, calling Sudan “one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, yet it is also one of its most overlooked”. He said millions of people in Khartoum lack electricity, clean water and health care, and warned that cholera, malnutrition and seasonal flooding compound the risk.

Bulletin automatically generated on August 4, 2026.