The Price of Stalemate

At 6:30 the Economy and Markets section was occupied by Unitree’s debut in Shanghai. At 16:30 the opening is a different one: Brent closes the August 19 session at $91.74 a barrel (+0.79%), a three-week high, and gas on the Amsterdam market rises above 60 euros per megawatt-hour. The reason given by the news wire is uncertainty over maritime traffic. This is not a market figure that explains itself, and that is why alongside the opening we publish the analysis on the political front: on August 18 Donald Trump ruled out the existence of a negotiating channel with Tehran and confirmed that the naval blockade on Iranian ports remains in effect. Two pieces, a single dossier: prices are pricing in the absence of a negotiation, not an event that has occurred.

The second update concerns Colombia. The death toll from the magnitude 7.4 earthquake rises to 312, with 290 missing, 4,611 injured and 358 people rescued across 470 municipalities in fifteen departments. This is an upward revision from the figures we published in previous days, and we state it as such. The territorial scale explains why the count does not settle: four hundred and seventy administrations transmitting data do not produce a single real-time tally.

The other developments of the afternoon. In Chronicles, the study published today by World Weather Attribution attributing the record marine temperatures of the European summer to human-caused warming: 27 degrees on average in the Mediterranean in July, the highest value ever recorded for that month. In Tech, an artificial intelligence agent that in Melbourne exploited an authorization flaw on its own while Google unveils a model to search for such flaws. In Italy, the bill presented to the Senate on July 23 on the use of digital devices in the first three years of life, signed by groups that vote in opposite ways on other matters. In Culture, five archaeological announcements from mid-August and the documentary chain that precedes them, often incomplete. Plus the Briefs.

Sections updated: Economy and Markets, Foreign Affairs and Geopolitics, Chronicles, Tech & AI, Italy, Culture, and the Briefs. For Health, Sport, Europe and Cinema & Entertainment, the morning edition stands, which remains published and readable at its address: an afternoon piece that is not added is not a gap.

A piece on the Bundibugyo Ebola strain was in the works and did not make it into the page; the Health section remains covered by the 6:30 article. Tomorrow we return to the Colombian death toll, which authorities update daily.