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A deadly strain of bird flu has landed on Australian shores. Does it pose a risk to pets?

The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has arrived on the Australian mainland and, while there’s no evidence yet of mass animal mortality, authorities are on high alert. The virus has killed millions of birds and thousands of marine mammals since it began spreading around the globe in 2021. The risk to humans is low – but should we be worried about our pets? How far is bird flu spreading in Australia? Australia’s fourth confirmed case of the H5 bird flu was detected in Western Australia in a giant petrel found at Quindalup on the state’s south-west coast on Saturday. Three birds in WA and one in South Australia have so far been confirmed to have had the virus. Results of a further suspected positive detection in a giant petrel on the WA south coast at Roses beach, 30km west of Esperance, were pending as of Sunday. Last Wednesday the federal government released an analysis of Australia’s 800 different birds and 350 mammals threatened by the disease. It assessed more than 150 native and unique bird species, and more than 10 mammal species including sea lions and fur seals, as being at “very high risk” of extinction or major decline if they caught the disease. Could bird flu spread among our pets? Along with birds and poultry, the virus can also be fatal for cats and dogs. The Australian government said in its advice that overseas infections were “infrequent” and usually resulted from “dogs or cats being exposed to sick or dead birds, other animals infected with [bird flu], consumption of raw pet food or unpasteurised (raw) milk”. Sheep, pigs, and horses were also considered low risk. On Sunday the threatened species commissioner, Dr Fiona Fraser, urged the public to avoid touching potentially sick birds in the wild and to keep pets away from wild birds. Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email “Pet cats and dogs which come into contact with sick birds could capture H5 bird flu themselves and all mammals are susceptible to H5 bird flu, so that includes our pet cats and dogs,” she said. “And it’s generally good practice to keep your pets away from wildlife anyway.” In an article for the Conversation, Prof Ricardo J Soares Magalhães, a veterinary science expert at the University of Queensland, said the risks were very real for back-yard chickens if an outbreak occurred, particularly if they were free range, and advised keeping chickens housed as much as possible. The Tasmanian government has noted in its advice that no reptiles have been reported to be affected. A general practitioner vet and senior lecturer at the University of Sydney, Dr Anne Quain, told Guardian Australia it was important to take precautions to minimise risks because H5 bird flu was “highly pathogenic” and there were no vaccines for cats or dogs. “The infection can cause respiratory or neurological signs,” she said. “There are reports of fatalities in cats and (less commonly) dogs elsewhere in the world.” What are the symptoms of bird flu in pets? The Australian government says in its advice that signs of the disease “may be subtle or mistaken for other illnesses”. They vary between species, but can include fever, lethargy, discharge from eyes or nose, difficulty breathing and neurological signs, such as tremors or seizures. The president of the Australian Veterinarian Association, Dr Diana Barker, said signs of bird flu included lethargy, swelling and fever. She advised bird owners to isolate animals suspected of having the virus and call clinics rather than bringing the bird in, to minimise the risk of spread. “Right now, the risk to common household pets in Australia is low, and there is no cause for alarm,” she said. “However the public must remain vigilant … Most cases overseas have been linked to specific exposures, most commonly cats eating infected wild birds or infected raw meat. “Dogs appear far less susceptible and typically show only mild signs.” One study, published by the American Veterinary Medical Association, found domestic cats infected with H5N1 had overall mortality rates of 50 to 70%. Should I keep my cat locked inside and my dog on a leash? Sean Dooley from BirdLife Australia advised that cats should be kept indoors in general for bird safety. Owners should keep their cats indoors in the case of an outbreak – both to curtail potential spread and protect cats from falling severely ill, he said. Dog owners should keep them on the leash at the beach, particularly along the southern coast and after heavy storms, which tended to cause more dead birds to wash up onshore. “If we do find a bird flu spread here then there is going to need to be a change in behaviour if people want to protect their pets,” he said. What else should pet owners do? Quain said the best way to prevent the infection was to “minimise or eliminate the risk of exposure to wildlife or infected animals” – making sure outdoor animal runs couldn’t be accessed by wildlife. “While we know cats are likely to be more susceptible than dogs, it would be wise to avoid allowing dogs to mix with potentially sick birds or their carcasses,” she said. “Avoid leaving pet food or water in areas where wild birds or animals can have contact with it.” Quain said in other countries, raw poultry and unpasteurised milk were sources of infection, particularly in cats. “If you have any contact with sick or dead birds yourself, even if you’ve worn gloves, shower and change clothes before contact with cats and dogs,” she said. Additional reporting by Petra Stock

Ukraine war briefing: Putin expects US negotiators in Moscow; fuel rationing in Siberia as crisis bites

Vladimir Putin says he expects US negotiators to come to Moscow, once Washington had reached an agreement with Iran over the Middle East conflict. “We expect that after all the events are over, after the active phase on the Iranian track has passed, we will see the arrival of those representatives of the US administration with whom we have already met in Moscow repeatedly,” the Russian president told Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin. “We are ready to continue negotiations and ready to continue negotiations and discuss all the details.” Putin was responding to a question on the state of Russian-US relations after the G7 summit in France, when Donald Trump said Russia should “make a deal with Ukraine”. On Wednesday, the US President said his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy was doing well in the war against Russia, having previously said he lacked the “cards” to win. Russia’s president acknowledged “a certain shortage” of fuel after Ukrainian retaliatory strikes on energy infrastructure sparked by his invasion of the country. “As for strikes against critical infrastructure in general, and energy infrastructure in particular, of course these attacks on our infrastructure facilities create problems, that’s obvious,” said Putin in an interview published by the Kremlin on Sunday. “Right now we’re observing a certain shortage, but it’s not critical.” The priority now was to improve air defences and protest fuel supplies particularly in Russian-occupied Crimea, he said. Fuel deliveries to the Black Sea peninsula by land and sea will be increased, Putin said. A governor in Siberia announced that drivers will be allowed to buy no more than 50 litres (13 gallons) of fuel per vehicle per day at state-run Rosneft fuel stations in the province. Igor Kobzev, the governor of the Irkutsk region, made the announcement as fuel shortages spread across Russia. Russia’s deputy prime minister Alexander Novak said Moscow was actively reviewing fuel export agreements to avoid compromising domestic needs. Zelenskyy said his forces had struck two oil refineries inside Russia over the weekend. A drone strike that sparked a blaze at a refinery in Slavyansk-na-Kubani, a town in Russia’s Krasnodar region, killed one person in Slavyansk and wounded another in a nearby village, local authorities said. Zelenskyy also claimed that another Russian refinery, in the Yaroslavl region around 700km (435 miles) from the Ukrainian border, was hit during the night-time strikes. There were no immediate reports from Russian authorities about the strike on the Yaroslavl refinery. Local governor Mikhail Evraev reported on Sunday morning that some roads between Moscow and the region’s capital, Yaroslavl, were temporarily closed due to “an enemy attack by Ukrainian drones”. Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram: “Each [strike] means a reduction in the resources that fuel the Russian war machine, and another step toward peace.” A Russian attack killed two people in Zaporizhzhia – a city in southern Ukraine – and injured 16 others, including two children, said regional administration head Ivan Fedorov. In Russia’s border region of Belgorod, Ukrainian drone strikes killed one person and injured another earlier on Sunday, according to the acting local governor, Alexander Shuvayev. Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces shot down 213 Ukrainian drones during the night, including over Russia, occupied Crimea and the Black and Azov seas. Meanwhile, Russia attacked Ukraine with 142 long-range strike drones and eight missiles overnight, according to the Ukrainian air force. Of those, 125 drones and seven missiles were struck down, the air force said.

British man arrested in Ecuador after woman’s body found in suitcase in Colombia

A British man has been arrested in Ecuador after the body of a woman was found inside a suitcase in Colombia. Matthew Ashley Foster-Smith is alleged to have caused the death of 36-year-old Natalia Villalba in an apartment in the Chicó neighbourhood of Bogotá on 18 June, local authorities said. Foster-Smith, from Bournemouth, Dorset, reportedly phoned the Sun a day before his arrest and said he had been watching an England World Cup match on television at the time of the incident. “I was watching England versus Croatia on a big screen in an Irish bar so it wasn’t me,” the 46-year-old told the newspaper. “After the match I went in to the shopping centre, I mooched about, bought an ice-cream, and came back later for the later games.” England’s opening World Cup match took place in Dallas, Texas on 17 June. The Sun reported that the suspect made a second call to the newspaper on Friday prior to his arrest, with a source telling the newspaper he had been located via the phone calls he had made. A post on the official X account of the attorney general’s office in Colombia said Foster-Smith was accused of beating Villalba to death before placing her body in a suitcase, trying to conceal what happened, and fleeing the scene. Dorset police are said to have been among the authorities that assisted with locating him before he was held at Quito international airport in Ecuador’s capital. An arrest warrant had been obtained by prosecutors in Colombia and an Interpol red notice issued, local authorities said. Carlos Fernando Galán, Bogotá’s mayor, said Dorset police had assisted with the operation. “This painful case will not go unpunished,” he said. A spokesperson for the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office said: “We are supporting a British man who has been detained in Ecuador and are in touch with the local authorities.” Dorset police were approached for comment on Sunday.

Ukraine’s targets in Russia are fully justified | Letters

Prof Christian Enemark’s letter (‘Morale’ bombing Moscow is not justified, 25 June) articulates a position of admirable moral consistency, but one that risks being fatally disconnected from the strategic and moral realities that Ukraine faces. The professor rests his argument on a bright-line distinction between combatants and civilians – a distinction that has genuine force in international humanitarian law, but which becomes considerably more complicated when Russian civilians fund, staff and politically sustain a war machine that has systematically targeted Ukrainian hospitals, schools, apartment blocks and energy infrastructure. The notion that Russian civilians are entirely without moral agency in relation to a war prosecuted in their name, with their taxes, and – polls suggest – with their substantial approval, is one that deserves more scrutiny than it receives here. Furthermore, Prof Enemark conflates two distinct categories of infrastructure targeting. Strikes on oil refineries and energy facilities are not “morale bombing” in the sense associated with the discredited area bombing campaigns of the second world war. They are attacks on dual-use industrial infrastructure that directly enables the Russian war effort – precisely the kind of target that international humanitarian law has long recognised as potentially legitimate, provided proportionality is observed. That civilians are inconvenienced, or even harmed incidentally, does not automatically render such strikes indiscriminate. The professor’s closing maxim – that “two wrongs do not make a right” – is philosophically tidy but strategically hollow. Ukraine is not retaliating for its own satisfaction; it is attempting to shorten a war in which its own civilian population continues to suffer grievously. If bringing the costs of that war home to Russian society accelerates its end, the calculus of harm may well favour such a strategy, not undermine it. The legitimate concern is proportionality and intent – not whether Ukraine must forever absorb punishment without responding in kind. Tim Dee-McCullough Windsor, Berkshire • In his letter, Prof Christian Enemark uses language that hides the clear moral reasoning and justification for Ukraine’s defence strategy, which is clearly targeting Russia’s ability to fuel its continued attacks on Ukraine. Videos on social media show that the injuries and private property damage caused in Ukraine’s strike on the Moscow oil refinery on 18 June probably arose due to air defences missing targets, or drone debris. In many past attacks, Russia maintained that the injuries arose due to the debris of drones intercepted by Moscow’s air defences. If Russia wants to protect its civilians, it should let Ukraine hit targets or, even better, the most moral act would be to withdraw from Ukraine’s territory entirely. Further, it is not reasonable to suspect Ukraine of deliberately targeting civilians when the Ukrainian president speaks of bringing the war closer to ordinary Russians. In this context, “ordinary Russians” does not include activists speaking out against the war, and probably refers to middle-class Russian urbanites. In the past few months, “ordinary Russians” have been vocal on social media about internet restrictions and now fuel shortages. Prior to this, “ordinary Russians” rarely spoke about the consequences of the war, and some even cheered the killings of Ukrainian civilians. Further, Russia’s mobilisation deliberately targets prisoners and ethnic minorities from remote regions, and exploits the global south. The Moscow regime shields “ordinary Russians” as a political strategy against any uprisings. Prof Enemark ignores not only the political strategy but the battlefield and defensive strategy of these attacks. Moving air defence systems to Moscow will leave gaps that Ukraine can now exploit to liberate occupied territories. Moreover, hitting strategic military and fuel installations in Russia prevents their use in Ukraine. These attacks save thousands of lives for every “ordinary Russian’s” shoulder injury. Bombing Moscow influences morale, but morale does not serve as the primary motivation for the attacks. Nonetheless, allies could have helped to defend Ukraine in a more ethical manner. Political will to end our global addiction to fossil fuels would have stopped the west from continuing to economically support Russia’s war machine after the 2014 invasion. Instead, Europe continues to import Russian energy. The west could have “closed the skies” over Ukraine at any point since February 2022. This moral act would have prevented the deliberate killing of children in Mariupol in March 2022. Ukraine already pays deeply for the moral failings of Russia; do not make it pay for the moral failings of allies. Dr Natalie Kopytko Lecturer, Sustainability Research Institute, University of Leeds • The main target of Ukraine’s largest-ever drone attack on Moscow was very clearly the Moscow oil refinery located in the Kapotnya district of the capital. One drone did not reach its target, hitting a nearby residential area, but there are no indications this was intentional, and the strike’s proximity to the Moscow refinery indicates that the drone probably missed its target or was driven off course due to Russian electronic warfare. Despite this, Prof Christian Enemark argues that “a strategy of ‘morale bombing’ a city’s residents is one that suffers from being inherently unjust”, writing that “Ukraine does not gain any moral permission to retaliate against Russia by launching indiscriminate attacks”. Yet Ukraine’s attack was highly discriminate, with nearly all drones that made it through Russia’s dense missile defence network – comprised of multiple rings of defensive systems – hitting the Moscow oil refinery. Enemark further argues that the “desired effect of such action is to increase [Russian] civilians’ sense of insecurity”, thus anchoring his objections to the attack. But if Ukraine’s aim was simply to increase a sense of insecurity in Moscow, many other less well-defended targets could have been hit. Or targets with more civilians in the immediate vicinity. The fact is that Ukraine chose to strike – with great precision – a key source of fuel and revenue for Russia’s ongoing illegal war against Ukraine. Enemark’s arguments also rely on a false moral equivalency between Russia and Ukraine, treating the two states as potentially acting on a par with one another – he remarks that “two wrongs do not make a right” – despite the widespread documentation of Russian soldiers targeting civilians, torturing civilians and prisoners of war, kidnapping children, and using rape as a method of war. The simple fact is that the Russian military has carried out a dizzying array of war crimes throughout its illegal and immoral war, and Ukraine precisely striking core pillars of the Russian economy that directly feed into ongoing wartime efforts is exactly what Volodymyr Zelenskyy says they are, “long-range sanctions” on the Russian war machine. Nathan Gabriel Wood Executive director, International Society for Military Ethics in Europe • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

Israel’s actions are fuelling antisemitism around the world | Letters

The leaked letter signed by significant figures in the Israeli political and cultural establishments, including former prime ministers and heads of the security services, threatening legal action over an “ideology of ethnic cleansing” in the occupied West Bank, is an important intervention (Israeli former leaders and security chiefs threaten legal action over ‘Jewish terrorism’, 24 June). Notably, while making comparisons with European anti‑Jewish pogroms in the 19th and 20th centuries, they also draw attention to the way in which Israel’s actions have fuelled antisemitism around the world. In his resignation speech, Keir Starmer praised himself for “ripping out the poison of antisemitism” in the Labour party. By waging factional war, while failing to draw any real distinction between genuine antisemitism and opposition to Israel’s policies, he contrived to expel disproportionate numbers of Jewish Labour party members who felt strongly about Israel’s war crimes and breaches of international law. While fighting antisemitism and all forms of racism remains critical, the Israeli intervention should finally put to rest the notion that appeasing Israel in its perpetration of war crimes contributes to a reduction of antisemitism, when the truth is the reverse. Dr Anthony Isaacs London • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

Mortuary in Caracas ‘overwhelmed’ as Venezuela struggles to respond after earthquakes

The bodies turn up on motorcycles, in the backs of cars or the load beds of pickup trucks: victims of a natural disaster that has shaken an already fragile nation to its core. “[Yesterday], the entire street was packed with people arriving with deceased relatives,” said Camila Rodríguez, a psychology student who is offering emotional support to grieving families at the Bello Monte mortuary in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas. At least 1,430 lives were lost when back-to-back earthquakes rattled the country’s Caribbean coast last Wednesday, toppling hundreds of buildings and leaving tens of thousands missing. Many of those fatal victims have ended up at Bello Monte, as have relatives of the dead, who gather there hoping to identify their loved ones. One of those waiting outside the pastel yellow facility was Marjorie Cedeño, who lost her mother, father and brother to Venezuela’s worst earthquake event in more than 125 years. The trio were trapped beneath the rubble when their four-floor building, Residencias Obelisco, collapsed in Los Palos Grandes, an upmarket neighbourhood at the foot of the El Ávila mountain. By 9pm on Friday, Cedeño had only managed to identify her brother, José Ruiz, 44, through a photograph shown to her by forensic police. Her mother, Zoila Cedeño, 72, who worked as the building’s superintendent, and her father, Jacinto Ruiz, 74, remain buried beneath the debris. “When the earthquake started, my brother was just entering the building. We believe his instinct was to go inside and rescue my parents, who were still there. He had just come back from the beach with a friend, who also died,” said Cedeño, who believed another 25 people remained trapped in the building’s ruins. “It’s horrible in there,” she said of the mortuary. “You can’t imagine how overwhelmed it is … This is something you wouldn’t wish on anyone. It’s an unimaginable tragedy.” Another woman, Belkis Cedeño, no relation, had come to the swamped facility hoping to find her sister-in-law, 56-year-old María Elena Moreno, who had been a resident of La Guiara, the coastal region worst affected by the quakes. “Their building was completely destroyed. A 10-storey building was reduced to the ground floor. They managed to pull her out early this morning. She was alone because her son had gone to the supermarket with his girlfriend,” Cedeño said. Cedeño said she had heard that her relative was rescued alive at about 2am on Thursday. But a false tsunami alert that spread across social media triggered panic and she was left exposed outside. “When they finally transferred her to the hospital, she arrived dead,” Cedeño said. Edgar Hernández, the former president of Venezuela’s National Funeral Homes Association, said undertakers across the country had donated more than 200 coffins, body bags and other supplies, while supporting colleagues responding to the disaster. “Many people have recovered bodies and transported them in their private vehicles to Bello Monte because it’s less congested and easier to access than the … mortuary [in La Guaira], which has completely collapsed under the pressure of the emergency.” On Saturday, Venezuela’s acting leader, Delcy Rodríguez, tried to comfort shell-shocked citizens. “Today we have managed to save 33 people who were still alive and I want to thank you,” she told a group of foreign rescue workers during a televised broadcast. “Every life means hope for Venezuela,” Rodríguez later tweeted, announcing that an 11-year-old boy had been found alive in the town of Caraballeda, along the devastated northern coast. Venezuela’s communications ministry has also sought to project an image of unity and diligence in the face of the tragedy, posting social media videos of government rescue teams using sledgehammers and stretchers to pluck dust-caked survivors from the rubble. But on the streets, there is growing anger at what many perceive as the sluggish response of a government unprepared for a crisis of this scale, and the way many feel they were abandoned to their own fate in the hours after disaster struck. Rodríguez was heckled by frustrated locals while touring one badly hit part of the capital. “The government isn’t doing anything for the people!” shouted one critic. Outside the mortuary, the relentless work of volunteers offering water, coffee and trauma counselling contrasted with the lethargic official reaction, which experts blame on years of underinvestment in emergency services, as well as the sheer scale of the natural disaster. Similar scenes could be seen all across the traumatised city, as tents, mattresses and food were delivered to hundreds of families sleeping out on the streets because they were too frightened to return home, many with young children. If there is one thing not lacking in Caracas, it is the food provided by volunteers. “I thank God because Venezuelans have such enormous hearts … The people have been extraordinary,” Marjorie Cedeño said as she waited for news of her parents. “There may be no government response,” she added. “But there are so many good people helping.”

French skydiving plane crashes near Nancy, killing all 11 onboard

A skydiving plane has crashed in north-eastern France, killing all 11 people onboard, according to the region’s prefect. The parachuting-school plane crashed near Nancy at 11am, said Yves Séguy, the prefect of the Meurthe-et-Moselle region. The pilot and 10 passengers – five ‌students and five instructors – died, the prefecture reported. The students were a group of nurses, according to a source close to the case and confirmed by the head of Meurthe-et-Moselle’s nursing council, Thierry Pechey. “They were colleagues who had decided to go on a first skydiving jump, no doubt to unwind, as we’re going through a difficult time with the heatwave,” he said. The plane suffered a malfunction and “fell almost vertically” after taking off from Nancy-Essey airfield on the outskirts of Nancy, Séguy said. “The plane, which was transporting 11 people, fell suddenly immediately next to the aerodrome. There were no collateral victims.” It crashed on the edge of a built-up area near the airfield, he told the broadcaster BFMTV. “Had it occurred just a few dozen metres away, the accident could have caused collateral casualties,” Séguy added. The parachutists were to have jumped as tandems, the Nancy mayor, Mathieu Klein, told public broadcaster France Info. In tandem jumps, two people, often an instructor and a first-time skydiver, are attached together for the descent. Klein said some of those taking part had families and friends who had come to watch and saw the plane fall from the sky. Emergency services responded immediately and were providing psychological support to several relatives of the victims, Séguy said, adding that authorities were also collecting witness statements. “We are deploying all available resources,” he said, including emergency medical teams, fire services, police and mental health support. A resident, identified as John Curaku by BFM-TV, told the broadcaster that he was in his garden when he heard what sounded like a plane’s engine stopping, immediately followed by a bang. He said he went to the crash site and “there were no signs of life”, with two of the bodies thrown a few metres from the plane. The French interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, was on his way to the scene, his staff ‌said. With reporting by Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Press

Fresh hostilities in Gulf suggest US-Iran memorandum was too broadly worded

The sudden eruption of fresh hostilities in the Gulf – just 10 days after Iran and the US signed a memorandum of understanding to end the conflict – threatens to put the two countries back on the path to war. It appears the deliberately opaque wording in the memorandum has been unable to withstand the pressure of conflicting interpretations, and as a result supporters of the deal inside Tehran are on the back foot. Statements to the effect that Iran’s government should never have agreed to reopen the strait of Hormuz are proliferating – and not just among the country’s hardliners. The wording of the 14-point document was deliberately broad on two of the most vexed issues, the Lebanon ceasefire and the strait, in the hope that as trust developed between the two sides, a modus vivendi could be found. Instead, the agreement is crumbling under the pressure, with each side accusing the other of violating its terms. In Lebanon, the difficulty is that two ceasefire agreements had been agreed – and they are pulling against each other. The first ceasefire, mentioned in the memorandum and developed at the Lucerne talks attended by the US vice-president, JD Vance, gave a new role in Lebanon for Iran, and hence its proxy Hezbollah. Iran was to join a new deconfliction mechanism, and it seemed as if Israel was being squeezed out. The second, fuller, ceasefire signed by the Israel and Lebanese government in Washington on Friday and overseen by the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, reverses all that, by excluding Iran and Hezbollah. It allowed for Israel to remain in southern Lebanon until the complete disarmament of Hezbollah – a condition the Shia force could never accept. The agreement – signed by Nawaf Salam, the Lebanese prime minister and a former head of the international court of justice – also contained a clause stating that both sides would cease all hostile actions in all legal fora, leaving Israel immune from prosecution for any alleged war crimes committed in Lebanon. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, responded to that deal triumphantly, saying: “We will stay in the area until Hezbollah’s weapons and those of the remaining terrorist groups are dismantled.” But it is very hard to see how the ceasefire signed by the Lebanese government could ever be remotely acceptable to Hezbollah or Iran. The agreement is framed as reinforcing Lebanese sovereignty – but makes that sovereignty entirely conditional. The memorandum of understanding has also proved equally ineffective in opening the strait of Hormuz. The document states that Iran will “make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels” through the strait with no charge for 60 days. It left “arrangements” and “best efforts” undefined, and made no reference to any other action to clear the strait, leaving the impression that Iran was the dominant actor. For the future, the memorandum said, Iran would hold a dialogue to define the future administration and maritime services in the strait, “in discussion with other Persian Gulf littoral states in line with the applicable international law and the sovereign rights of coastal states of the Strait of Hormuz”. Although it could seem that Iran had interpreted that language to mean that it alone can determine which route ships must take, Tehran had last week been working with the UN’s International Maritime Organization and Oman on an evacuation plan to allow hundreds of ships through the strait. The IMO secretary general, Arsenio Domínguez, felt he had Iran’s agreement to launch that plan, offering a northern and southern route throught the strait. Yet on Thursday morning the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Navy said ships could only use the northern route to exit the strait and in the afternoon, the Ever Lovely, a Singapore-flagged, 2015-built Evergreen container ship, was struck while transiting a southern route close to Oman. Domíngues halted his scheme, saying the IMO would not put seafarers at risk, but despite Thursday’s attack, ships have continued to venture through the strait. Behind that incident may be an Iranian fear that the southern route, along the coast of Oman, will give the US a way to end the Iranian chokehold. Behind that is a further Oman-Iran discussion about a long-term solution for management of the strait that Iran might yet accept. Oman will want to frame any proposals in the context of Unclos, the UN convention on the law of the sea, and so will rule out tolls. But Article 41 of Unclos allows strait states to designate sea lanes and set up traffic separation schemes. Article 43 would allow for Oman in consultation with the IMO to ask stakeholders with a shared interest in navigational aids in the strait to contribute to a funded “cooperative mechanism” to help with these maritime services. In theory, charges could be levied by Oman for specific navigational safety services if they conferred a direct benefit on a ship, but there could be no general levy. For now, however, as the bombing recommences, creative legal ideas appear to have been put to one side as the men of war return to centre stage.