Author: staff
France’s return to growth lasted just one month. Business activity contracted again in October, while confidence among French companies fell to its lowest level since the first Covid-19 lockdowns in 2020. The drop pulled the wider eurozone down with it. The eurozone’s composite purchasing managers’ index (PMI), which measures activity across manufacturing and services, fell to 51.9 in October from 53.1 in September. It was the weakest reading in four months, although the index remains above 50, the threshold separating growth from contraction. Economists had expected a smaller decline to 52.7. The services and manufacturing indices also came in lower…
By Tokunbo Salako with AP Published on 23/10/2026 – 11:17 GMT+2 Tributes have been paid to the Hollywood veteran actor Tom Skerritt, best known for his starring roles in Alien and Top Gun, who’s died aged 93. His family revealed he died on Wednesday from natural causes. “While the world knew Tom through his remarkable acting career, we knew him for his humor, curiosity, wisdom, generosity and the love he brought into our lives,” the family said in a statement. “He cared deeply about imagination, creativity, storytelling, service, veterans, the natural world and helping others find and share their own voices.” On screen,…
There will also be a “fiscal devolution roadmap” on budget day, setting out terms of how regional mayors can get more power and money and drawn up partly by Burnham’s new Manchester outpost, No. 10 North. Legislation to let them impose tourist taxes will be published in the coming weeks. And officials have talked behind the scenes about procurement and boosting Britain’s heavy industries; the budget needs to find almost £5 billion to plug a hole in a defense investment plan unveiled under Starmer. Targeted cost-of-living measures appear likely to include scrapping “standing charges” on domestic gas bills, which cost…
Torrential rain has triggered flash flooding across southeast Queensland, Australia, breaking multiple October rainfall records, stranding drivers, forcing school closures and prompting hundreds of emergency calls over two days. The deluge began on Thursday with a water treatment plant near Moreton Bay, north of Brisbane, recording more than 250 millimetres of rain in 24 hours. Some locations received nearly 180 millimetres in just three hours. Beerburrum recorded its wettest October day on record, while Toowoomba experienced its heaviest October rainfall in 29 years. Flooded roads damaged infrastructure, disrupted electricity supplies and forced 14 schools to close. Authorities urged residents in…
Published on 23/10/2026 – 9:33 GMT+2 One of New York’s longest-running tourist attractions could be reaching the end of the road, after the city council voted to ban horse-drawn carriages in Central Park. Horse-drawn carriages have been part of Central Park since the mid-19th century and the vote on 22 October signals a possible end to a tradition that has sparked years of heated debate. Mayor Zohran Mamdani must still sign the measure into law. He has previously supported a ban but has also raised concerns about protections for workers in the industry. If signed into law, the ban will…
Published on 23/10/2026 – 9:54 GMT+2•Updated 10:04 RAYE has been crowned the winner of this year’s Mercury Prize, taking home the coveted statue for her second album ‘This Music May Contain Hope’. The British artist, born Rachel Keen, beat favourite Olivia Dean, as well as JADE, Florence + The Machine, the War Child ‘Help (2)’ compilation album and Paul McCartney – who was shortlisted for the first time, aged 84, with his new record, ‘The Boys of Dungeon Lane’. The judges praised ‘This Music May Contain Hope’, which features the hit single ‘Where Is My Husband!’, for combining old-school Hollywood…
Ukrainian drone units started testing speed limits from Thursday evening, shortly after Trump told reporters that Musk had restored Starlink. While some tests recorded speeds of up to 200 km/h over the Black Sea and noted an improvement, the drones still rapidly lost signal once flying above the 160 km/h speed limit. “So, the key point is: We accelerate above 180 km/h, fly for a couple of minutes, the connection drops. It falls to 140–150 km/h and then is re-established — but the situation is better,” a drone pilot from Ukraine’s top drone unit known as Magyar’s Birds told POLITICO.…
In Keelung, enormous waves crashed against the shore, while emergency workers cleared fallen branches and debris from streets in the capital. One person was killed after being swept away by waves on Liuqiu island on Thursday, while 94 others were injured. Schools and offices closed, while 931 flights were cancelled, including all 262 domestic services and 669 international flights. At Taipei’s Songshan Airport, departure counters stood empty and stranded passengers rested beneath screens displaying cancellations. Champi had weakened from peak sustained winds of 298 km/h earlier in the week to 155 km/h as it approached Taiwan. Authorities evacuated nearly 1,300…
Sweden-based carmaker Volvo Cars said on Friday it would cut about 2,500 jobs worldwide, as US tariffs and strong competition from local brands in China pushed it into a third-quarter loss. The company, majority-owned by Chinese group Geely, reported revenue of 66.9 billion kronor (€6bn) for the third quarter, down nearly 23% from the same period last year. It swung to a net loss of 5.7 billion kronor (€513mn) for the quarter from a net profit of 4.5 billion kronor (€405mn) a year earlier. “We continue to operate in a very tough environment with strong external challenges: de-globalisation, hypercompetition and…
France has been having a bad time of late, and it’s not just because of riots, fires and looting — incidentally, if anyone wants 250 slightly singed Paris Saint-Germain football jerseys and several dozen boxes of apéricubes, please look for me on eBay. The droughts and heat waves that battered Europe mean strict production rules for some of France’s most famous cheeses were loosened. Comté, Beaufort and Abondance — not a French kids TV series about three dairy-loving glove puppets but rather cheeses made out of milk from cows that graze in the mountains and carry the appellation d’origine protégée…