Cool, cloudy, windless weather cutting renewables output, with natural gas futures and power prices across Europe reaching their highest levels since December 2022

Marc Spautz insists potential changes would only take place under a collective work agreement

Cool, cloudy, windless weather cutting renewables output, with natural gas futures and power prices across Europe reaching their highest levels since December 2022

Marc Spautz insists potential changes would only take place under a collective work agreement

More than 500 passengers were on board the trains when the incident occurred in the province of Toledo, south of Madrid.

Survivors of the train crash in Spain have spoken of their shock, panic and anger at the accident in Toledo province on Wednesday.

At some point, maybe around the time Joe Biden declared on the debate stage that he “finally beat Medicare,” Washington got the idea that defeating an old man in an election was easy. Not always. Just days before an American election viewed by many voters as an opportunity to neuter an unpopular 80-year-old president, voters in Brazil and Israel delivered a vivid reminder that an old man in his country’s highest office usually didn’t get there by accident. In Brazil, a decisive majority of voters on Sunday returned left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for a fourth term, defying expectations that Brazilians were ready to discard the fiery trade unionist as yesterday’s man. In Israel’s Tuesday election, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — the longest-serving premier in his country’s history — lost his parliamentary majority but may have thwarted his opponents from electing a viable governing coalition. Lula, 81, and Netanyahu, 77, have almost nothing in common except their age and political resilience. They have towered over their countries for more than a generation, outfoxed prosecutors and humiliated electoral rivals, enraged and entranced Washington. They have done it with the loyal support of voters on the left and right who view each man in heroic terms, as a tireless champion of their interests and a shield against the most fearsome enemies. President Donald Trump has, at times, shared those political traits. If he has one more escape act left in him, it would look more like what we’ve just seen in Israel and Brazil than anything in Trump’s second term so far. Since returning to office in 2025, Trump has failed to deliver policy victories that most voters can feel in their own lives, while shedding some of the most important parts of the political identity that forged his populist base. He ran for president in 2024 pledging to whip inflation and railing against needless foreign wars. Trump’s signature acts this term — passing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, waging a global trade war, attempting regime change in Iran — have made health care, consumer goods and energy more expensive. What is his closing message in the midterm election? Trump makes one argument consistently: that Democrats are crazy. But you’d be hard-pressed to find a convincing through line in a series of campaign-trail monologues boasting about the economy, trashing individual Democratic candidates as weirdos and subversives, musing about renaming oceans, defending the Cheesecake Factory and admiring Jon Husted’s rock-hard bod. Compare this to what voters heard in Brazil and Israel: relentless, ruthless, shameless appeals to the political coalitions that Lula and Netanyahu forged over decades. In Brazil, Lula tapped into the regional and class-based divisions that have defined his electoral career, while offering a buffet of new economic promises to voters in his base. He hiked welfare payments, promised voters free public transit on weekends and endorsed a shorter workweek. His 45-year-old opponent, Flavio Bolsonaro, stumbled in the final days with a dismissive comment alluding to an accident Lula suffered as a young metalworker — a remark apparently taken by many voters as a gratuitous sneer at the working class. In Netanyahu’s fight for political survival, the Israeli leader delivered an apocalyptic message aimed at polarizing the electorate to his advantage. He posted an AI-generated image of a nuclear strike on Tel Aviv, branded his challengers as soft on Iran and derided Arab political parties as an enemy within. Israeli and American news outlets have reported that Netanyahu pushed the military for a new wave of attacks on Iran before the election, an escalation that might have reshaped the campaign’s final days. If Trump had approached the midterms with Lula- or Netanyahu-like focus and vigor, he would probably still be a very unpopular president. But he might be a very unpopular president with a firm grip on the red states that control the Senate, instead of scrambling in October to defend Kansas and Mississippi. Trump’s populist campaign tactics have been comparatively slapdash and unresponsive to voters’ real needs. He floated giving away $5,000 checks to Americans if Republicans keep control of Congress, only to see lawmakers from his own party pan the idea as a budget buster. He has handed out locally tailored goodies — new funding pledges for a pipeline in Alaska, tariff exemptions as a gift to Maine — that might make a difference on the margins but can’t substitute for a national message on the cost of living. And Trump has not made a concerted effort to heal the breach within the MAGA base over the war in Iran. He has toggled between Bibi-like warnings about nuclear attacks on Southern California and assurances that the war will end after the November election, all while fuel prices stay painfully high for the people who put him in office. It may add up to the least effective campaign ever for the man who has overwhelmed American politics for 11 and a half years. And yet, the midterms are not the end of the story. Even a broad defeat for Republicans next week would leave Trump with half a term to work with. Two more years to recover his footing, return to political basics, reconnect with his base and fight, fight, fight for relevance and recovery. There is a bag of tricks available to him, if he were to get serious about salvaging his presidency. For Trump’s opponents, the warning from abroad remains: Beware the old man in a hurry.

LONDON — Andy Burnham’s love affair with beans is well documented. Asked what items he would stockpile in case of an emergency, the prime minister picked the store-cupboard staple, together with soup and Twiglets. Now bean makers are screaming betrayal. As part of a stream of “everyday fixes” aimed at easing the cost of living, Chancellor John Healey said the government would suspend tariffs on more than 100 products, including imported chocolate, marmalade and Burnham’s beloved baked beans. An analysis of the list — published in full today — reveals that tariffs of 16% will be removed on an array of finished bean products imported from around the world, many of which are also manufactured in the U.K. While the raw beans used to make products like baked beans are mostly imported, the U.K. boasts a major bean processing industry which food executives fear could now be undermined by exporters such as China and the U.S. Karen Betts, chief executive of the Food and Drink Federation, said the budget did “nothing to ease the pressures food and drink manufacturers are under.” “Instead, one of the chancellor’s flagship announcements, removing tariffs from some food and drink products, will have no meaningful impact on consumer prices,” Betts said. “But it will undermine British factories and their workers, grappling with much higher costs, producing the same products. “The Treasury in particular has persistently failed to recognise the importance of food and drink manufacturing to jobs and prosperity the length and breadth of the U.K.,” Betts added. Instead of making it easier to import rival products, Betts said the government should be addressing the “acute pressures” the sector is facing, including high energy costs and “overly complex” regulation. A spokesperson for Princes Group, which produces Branston Baked Beans in the U.K., said removing tariffs on imported finished baked beans was “unlikely to have a meaningful impact on prices, particularly as there are currently no tariffs on the imported haricot beans used by U.K. manufacturers and no tariffs on EU imports.”  “We believe measures that help address the higher costs of manufacturing food in the UK, particularly energy costs, would have a greater impact for both consumers and British businesses.” According to the government, the move, together with existing tariff suspensions announced earlier this year, will reduce consumer costs by between £245 million and £595 million a year, saving households up to £21 on their food shop annually. In response to a consultation on the changes, the government said it had taken the decision to exclude several products from the initial list “due to concerns about the impact on domestic production, developing countries, international considerations and other government policies.” “The government recognises that for some remaining products, there may be some limited impacts on domestic producers of goods which will be able to be imported tariff-free for the specified period. However, the government considers the benefits of this to consumers, through reduced costs, outweigh those risks.” The U.K. government did not respond to a request for comment.

The online portal MyMinfin and several other services have been temporarily taken offline as a precaution while officials investigate and secure their systems.

Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said that "the whole of Spain is in mourning" following the accident and expressed his solidarity with the victims, their families and the injured.

Two Arab-majority parties are set to win a historic 19 seats in total, amid a record turnout at the polls in Israel on Tuesday. Voters from the community, descendants of Palestinians who stayed after Israel's creation and who make up around 20 percent of the population, have been enraged by the Netanyahu government's ultra-nationalist Jewish vision for the country and the Palestinian territories. FRANCE 24's Emerald Maxwell reports.

Alvin Hellerstein, a top US judge who was handling the trial against deposed Venezuelan leader Nicholas Maduro and previously oversaw lawsuits stemming from the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre and multiple cases involving President Donald Trump, died on Wednesday aged 92.

US points to increase in abstentions in General Assembly as evidence that push to isolate Cuba is slowly succeeding.

Rwanda’s milk bars

Decision marks stunning downfall for near-century-old law firm that was among America’s largest and most prestigious

Central bank to vote on monetary policy seven times next year in shift from longstanding practice of eight such meetings

The accident, the second in less than a year on the same busy rail line, was one of the deadliest in the country’s history.

Fernando Seco, 62, said he and others moved at least a dozen wounded passengers from the crash site, using parts of the wreckage as makeshift stretchers.