Tuesday, October 27, 2026
Sweden's centre-left opposition leads the preliminary count by 176 seats to 173, with postal and overseas votes still to come. The Social Democrats are the largest party on 28.1 percent. The Sweden Democrats, whom the prime minister had proposed bringing into government, fell to 17.6 percent, the first decline in their history.
The leaders of the SNP, Plaid Cymru and Sinn Féin, who are now the first ministers of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, signed a joint declaration in Cardiff on Monday asserting their nations' right to self-determination. The UK prime minister has already ruled out referendums in Scotland and Northern Ireland. The power to hold one sits with Westminster in every case.
Speaking at his golf resort in Ireland on Sunday, President Trump said the US would ultimately leave Iran "unless we decide to stay and keep the oil like Venezuela," and that gasoline prices would "drop like a rock" when the war ends. The two statements point in opposite directions. One describes a withdrawal. The other describes an occupation of the world's most contested oil infrastructure.
Saudi Arabia shut its East-West pipeline after drone attacks last week, closing the main route its oil had used to avoid the Strait of Hormuz. Over the weekend the Houthis took Perim Island and with it control of the Bab al-Mandab, the strait that cargoes loaded at the pipeline's Red Sea terminal must pass to reach Asia. Brent rose toward $108 on Monday.
US officials have linked satellite imagery supplied to Iran by Chinese entities to the July strike on a base in Jordan that killed three American soldiers, The Wall Street Journal reported. Iran obtained high-resolution pictures of the base before the attack and after it. The officials did not accuse the Chinese government. The disclosure lands ten days before Xi Jinping is due at the White House.
The Philippine Coast Guard recovered 41 more bodies from the MV June Aster on Saturday, raising the toll to 76 with 43 survivors and 13 missing. Those figures add up to 132, which is exactly the number who boarded. The ship was certified for 330. Overloading is no longer the question; the two explosions and the missing captain are.
The New York Times, citing Iranian officials, reports that a hardline group attacked ships in the Strait of Hormuz in early July without the knowledge of the president, the Revolutionary Guards commander or the national security council, wrecking the memorandum meant to end the war. Iranian officials told Washington the same thing in July. Analysts argued then that the chain of command had decided.
The MV June Aster was four nautical miles from Coron when survivors say an explosion came from the cargo hold. Thirty-five are confirmed dead, 43 survived and 53 are missing. That is 131 people against a manifest of 134, and in Philippine ferry disasters the manifest has not always been the number aboard.
Donald Trump told reporters on Wednesday that the war with Iran "is going to end immediately after the election" on 3 November, and that Washington is no longer seeking a negotiated end. When the party most able to stop a war names the week it will stop, everyone else stops planning for an outcome and starts planning for a date.
American forces struck further Iranian tankers, and attacks have been reported on Saudi oil facilities. Brent passed $100. For a year this conflict was fought over a waterway and the vessels crossing it. Hitting production and export infrastructure is a different category of target, and it does not reverse.
Two people were pulled out alive on the tenth day — a worker from 225 metres inside a flooded hydropower tunnel, and a 64-year-old from her collapsed house. Nepal and China now count 1,375 dead and about 5,000 missing. The gap between those figures will close, and almost none of it will close through rescue.
Iran's security council secretary says a restricted maritime zone will be declared within days, running from the US blockade line through Hormuz into the Gulf, with uncoordinated vessels placed on a list affecting their insurance and future passage. American forces have already redirected 87 ships. A master cannot satisfy both.
On Saturday this paper asked whether the 72-hour halt on strikes against Kyiv and Moscow would be extended, and said a return to strikes the moment the aircraft left would mean the pause was hospitality. The talks ended without a breakthrough. Zelensky expects the war to run into winter. The undertaking runs out at the end of Monday.
The AfD took 43.8 percent in Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday and 39 of 83 seats, three short of a majority. The four parties that have ruled out governing with it hold 39 between them — exactly the same number. The balance is five seats belonging to the one party that has not ruled it out.
Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Saturday and Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv on Sunday. To make the two journeys safe, Russia and Ukraine each held off aerial attacks on the other's capital for 72 hours. It was arranged in days, it required no monitors, and it held.
An American carrier and a guided-missile destroyer evaded ballistic missiles fired by the Revolutionary Guard on Saturday. No US personnel were hurt. The response was not aimed at the launchers. US forces struck three Iranian oil tankers — two disabled, one abandoned by its crew and left inoperable.
Six transits a day where there were eighty-five. Meanwhile the day rate for a very large crude carrier has passed $200,000 on the Gulf-to-Asia run, up more than 440 percent in a year, and tanker owners are booking the best earnings since the last supercycle. The same event did both things.
Eleven more ships were added this week to a blacklist now naming 56 vessels — crude carriers, gas tankers, clean product ships. The clause that matters is the last one: any vessel that takes cargo from a listed ship, ship-to-ship, joins the list. That is not area denial. It is a sanctions regime, run from the other side.
The delivery company building Expo 2030 shifted to Saudi-made pipe, cable and concrete and avoided the shortages the war produced. Local content rules were written to build an industrial base. They turned out to be a supply chain hedge nobody had priced.
US officials say COSCO vessels carry concealed signals-intelligence equipment. China calls the claim baseless. Either way, the problem the accusation creates is commercial: the fleet in question calls at the ports that everyone else's cargo moves through.