Two high-speed trains collided near Urda in Toledo province on Wednesday morning, killing at least 68 people in Spain's worst rail disaster since 2013. A Renfe AVE carrying 397 passengers ran into the rear of an Iryo train with 147 people on board that had stopped further up the Madrid-Seville line. Two carriages went down an embankment. Renfe says its train had been authorised to continue and struck the stationary unit for reasons it cannot explain. Spain's transport minister called the cause an inexplicable error and said the control centre's decisions will be examined. It is the second crash this year involving the same two operators.
Exit polls from Israel's main television stations showed neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's bloc nor the alliance led by former military chief Gadi Eisenkot reaching the 61 seats needed for a Knesset majority. Turnout passed 74% by 8 p.m., eight points above the 2022 race and the highest at that hour in decades. Official results are due by November 4, after which President Isaac Herzog has a week to consult party leaders and pick a candidate to form a government. Arab-led parties could decide who governs. The vote was the first national election since the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, and worked as a verdict on Netanyahu's wartime record and his corruption trial.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva won a fourth term on Sunday, defeating Senator Flavio Bolsonaro in Brazil's closest presidential runoff since the return to democracy. With 99.9% of ballots counted, electoral authorities put Lula on 51.7% and Bolsonaro on 48.2%. The Supreme Court extended voting by two hours after both campaigns asked for more time. Flavio Bolsonaro, eldest son of imprisoned former president Jair Bolsonaro, had promised to pardon his father, who is serving 27 years for plotting a coup. He has refused to recognise the result and asked for it to be annulled. Lula campaigned on democracy, resistance to US tariffs and lower inequality, and takes office in January.
Israel said on Sunday that all land crossings with the West Bank will be closed on Tuesday, when Israelis vote in a general election, and that Palestinian workers are barred from entering Israeli communities from now until then. The announcement followed the killing of two soldiers at a checkpoint near Hebron on Friday. Israeli forces pushed into Hebron a day earlier and displaced about 2,000 residents, and Defense Minister Israel Katz said they would not return until what he called the Hamas issues in the city are settled. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised a heavy price and an operation on a scale not seen since 1967.
Protests against war and rising living costs filled squares in Rome, Milan, Turin, Naples and other Italian cities on Saturday, with scattered clashes reported. The wave of unrest started on 16 October with student sit-ins over low wages, high rents and cuts to school funding, and it has since merged with a separate movement of farmers and truck drivers in the south who are angry about diesel prices. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has condemned the violence, and her cabinet approved a security package that allows troops to guard sensitive sites and sets heavier penalties for riot damage. With national elections due in 2027, the government is under pressure to answer the price question rather than only the policing one.
President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday that Washington could end its war with Iran quickly, then questioned whether a fast finish or a slow wind-down is the better path. He said oil is still flowing through the Strait of Hormuz and that the US is getting what it wants. No decision was announced. ABC News reported this week that US and Israeli officials are drawing up plans for possible renewed strikes after next month's midterm elections. Crude markets have already reacted: Brent jumped nearly 4% to about $117 a barrel on Friday, close to its wartime peak, while West Texas Intermediate moved back above $100.
A late-night attack on Dammam airport killed two people and injured eight, Saudi aviation authorities said, a day after Washington told nonessential US embassy staff and their families to leave Saudi Arabia. Houthi attacks on Saudi airports and oil sites have reached an unprecedented scale this month, with 22 people killed at airports. Riyadh has shut its main airport and postponed a major investment conference. Iran's Revolutionary Guard warned it would strike US bases across the region if American warships keep escorting vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, the route that carried a fifth of world oil before the war began in February.
US special envoy Steve Witkoff met Vladimir Putin at the Constantine Palace in St Petersburg and asked him to consider resuming US-mediated trilateral talks with Ukraine. Russia released detained US teacher Stephen Hubbard before the meeting, and Putin offered help on Iran and fertiliser supplies. Witkoff came from talks in Oslo with Volodymyr Zelensky and European and NATO officials, which a US official called meaningful progress on security guarantees and a post-war economic plan. Zelensky says he hopes to discuss ending the war at a three-way meeting with Putin and Trump. Kyiv and its allies worry Washington is stepping back from Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy says the Pentagon is delaying interceptor missiles that European countries have already paid for, and that the shipment is waiting for a signature from US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Several European states have offered Patriot interceptors from their own stocks but still need US approval to transfer them. The complaint comes as White House envoy Steve Witkoff travels to Oslo to meet Zelenskiy and European leaders, then on to Moscow. Kyiv is also unsettled by Trump's plan to meet Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in China next month.
President Donald Trump said on Monday that he would join a three-way meeting with Russia's Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping, but that the talks would focus on nuclear weapons rather than the war in Ukraine. The Kremlin said the idea came up in recent discussions, and next month's APEC summit in Shenzhen has emerged as a possible venue. No meeting has been fixed. Trump also renewed criticism of Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky, saying it was time for someone else to negotiate on Ukraine's behalf. A joint meeting of the three leaders would be unprecedented.