What has changed since 6:30

At 6:30 we had opened on an expected deadline and a verifiable fact: none of the three tracks envisaged by the Islamabad memorandum — nuclear, sanctions, shipping security — had been set up. In the afternoon the deadline came to pass. The ceasefire between the United States and Iran ended on August 17 without renewal, after both sides had already declared it void, and the Strait of Hormuz remains closed. This morning’s assessment holds; what we still cannot measure is the distance between the two positions, because the list of demands Tehran sets as a condition for renewal is not public. We state this in the opening rather than estimating it.

Here is what is new as of 16:30. Foreign Affairs and Geopolitics with the opening piece on the deadline. News with the death toll from the Flores earthquake, which has risen to at least 68 as the island registers new tremors: this is an upward revision from the 47 initially confirmed by the Indonesian agency BNPB, and we report it as such. Europe with the August average of Spanish polls, which gives the PP-Vox bloc 49.4% against 36.6% for the combined PSOE-Sumar-Podemos: a snapshot, not a seat projection. Italy with Giorgia Meloni’s interview with Milano Finanza, in which she cites figures from her term in office and points to the middle class as the next fiscal chapter: we report her statements as statements, and distinguish where they are verifiable. Sport with Simona Quadarella’s hat-trick at the European Championships in Paris and Italy’s first place in athletics in Birmingham. Tech & AI with the entry into force of the AI Act’s transparency obligations and the shift of oversight of general-purpose models to the AI Office. Economy and Markets with Stripe’s acquisition of OpenRouter, over 7 billion dollars against a valuation of 1.3 billion in May. And the Briefs.

The sections not touched by this edition remain covered by this morning’s pieces, still published and readable at their address: Culture in particular, and for Europe, Italy, Sport, Tech, Economy and News the 6:30 pieces remain alongside the new ones, which tell different stories and do not replace them.

A Health article on the U.S. executive order on pediatric vaccines was drafted and not published: on health-related content, when in doubt, this newspaper does not publish. The material remains on file.

From tomorrow, the count of victims in Flores will continue to move: the teams have not yet reached all the isolated communities.