The Brief

The U.S. military carried out fresh strikes inside Iran, saying it was responding to attempted attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and hitting sites tied to Iran's Revolutionary Guard. Iran retaliated with missiles and drones against U.S. bases and American allies across the Gulf, including Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. Iran's health minister said U.S. strikes have now killed at least 18 people, including two children; Iranian officials said one strike hit a wedding gathering near Sirik, and the U.S. said it was reviewing that claim while denying it targets civilians. Saudi Arabia said an earlier Iranian attack on the tanker Sidr in the strait killed two Filipino crew members.

President Trump played down the prospect of a negotiated settlement, urged Iranians to rise up against their government and said the renewed fighting would not last long, while threatening to strike Tehran "very hard" and floating renaming the Strait of Hormuz the "Trump Strait." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel is working to topple Iran's government, and Russia's Vladimir Putin signaled continued support for Tehran.

More than a week after flash floods tore through mountain valleys in Nepal and across the border in Tibet, authorities said the death toll has surpassed 1,200, with thousands of people still unaccounted for. Rescuers are searching for workers trapped near hydropower plants, in some cases struggling to locate the facilities themselves.

Officials have carried out mass burials as families trek through devastated areas searching for missing relatives, and bodies are being excavated from the mud in the hard-hit Rasuwa district near the China border. Nepal's prime minister linked the flooding to climate change, and the UN says relief and recovery efforts are intensifying as aid is airlifted to isolated villages.

The German government said Russia was behind an attempted attack on Leipzig airport on Aug. 4, when a drone carrying an explosive device was found near Ukrainian cargo planes. Berlin said it would order the closure of a Russian consulate among other measures in response.

The EU and NATO said they would step up pressure on Moscow, which they accused of acting with growing recklessness. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the bloc is preparing additional sanctions against Russia, and Western governments have described the incident as bearing the hallmarks of a Russian "hybrid" sabotage campaign aimed at countries that support Ukraine.

A jury in Malta acquitted businessman Yorgen Fenech of plotting the 2017 car-bomb killing of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who had written extensively about suspected corruption in the country's political and business circles. She was 53 when she was killed.

Her murder shocked Europe, set off mass protests that forced a prime minister from office and exposed a culture of impunity in the EU's smallest state. Fenech, once one of Malta's most prominent businessmen, had been accused of complicity in the plot.

Russian aerial attacks on Kyiv killed at least 12 people, with eight dead in the capital and four more in the surrounding region, Ukrainian authorities said. The strikes hit residential buildings and civilian infrastructure across several districts in the sixth consecutive day of bombardment.

President Volodymyr Zelensky urged international airlines to avoid Russian airspace as Ukraine expands its long-range drone operations, noting that Chinese and Gulf carriers still fly over Russia. President Vladimir Putin accused Zelensky of "terrorism," and Moscow said it would intensify its attacks.

U.S. and Venezuelan officials signed a series of agreements formalizing a deal that gives a U.S.-created venture control over a large share of Venezuela's oil reserves, described as roughly a fifth of the total, or some 65 billion barrels of crude. The White House said the arrangement involves a joint venture with North American Blue Energy Partners, linked to Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt, who has faced money-laundering investigations in Spain, the United States and Switzerland.

Chevron, the largest foreign oil operator in Venezuela, confirmed it had received additional acreage in the Orinoco Belt and planned to invest about $7 billion to double its output there. The reserves deal has puzzled analysts and drawn anger inside Venezuela, where one former envoy called it a colonialist "fever dream."